You are here

Vermont » Addison County » Middlebury » Old Chapel

Old Chapel

-A A +A
1834–1836, Asahel Parsons, builder; frequent interior remodelings. Old Stone Row
  • (Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)

The chapel was built to house the combined academic, administrative, and religious activities of the college. Proposed by Laomi Baldwin of Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a broadside structure on the model of Charles Bulfinch's University Hall (1814) at Harvard, it was ultimately built by local joiner Asahel Parsons on the model of Peter Banner's gable-front Lyceum (1802–1804) on Yale's Old Brick Row. The facade of a simple, mill-like mass is embellished with a central entrance tower served by a double flight of stairs and crowned with an octagonal Greek Revival cupola that functioned as the college's first observatory.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson
×

Data

What's Nearby

Painter Hall
Davis Family Library
Axinn Center at Starr Library
Middlebury College
Center for the Arts

Citation

Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson, "Old Chapel", [Middlebury, Vermont], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VT-01-AD30.2.

Print Source

Cover: Buildings of Vermont

Buildings of Vermont, Glenn M. Andres and Curtis B. Johnson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013, 125-126.

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

,