St. Mary's Seminary Chapel - Baltimore MD - First of its Kind on Waymarking.com

NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES INVENTORY - NOMINATION FORM

"Saint Mary's Seminary Chapel in Baltimore, Maryland was designed in the Neo-Gothic style and built by the French architect Maximilien Godefroy between 1806 and 1808. Godefroy's original design fortunately survives in drawings (1806-1807) of the façade, plan, altar, and ciborium as he proposed they should be built. Therefore, it is possible to compare the Chapel as it was first built with Godefroy's design, a process necessary because the Sulpician Fathers modified the scheme in the course of construction.

This small brick building occupies a unique position in the history of American architecture. It is the first church in the NeoGothic style to be built in the United States. Considering the national prominence this style was to achieve later in the 19th century, especially in religious architecture, it is of special importance to mark its beginning in this structure. The history of the Chapel is important to the history of American architecture in three ways.

First, the original Godefroy design reveals the sources with which an early nineteenth-century architect trained in Europe worked as he composed in the"Gothick” style. Secondly, the Chapel is relevant because its nineteenth-and-twentieth-century history preserves a record of changing attitudes to Gothic revivalism in the United States. Finally, the renovation and restoration of the Chapel in 1967-1968, under the direction of Alexander Cochran, F.A.I.A., presents the problems implicit in the accommodation which must be made in such work when an early building of refined and positive stylistic qualities must go on, not as a preserved monument, but as a functioning part of contemporary life."

FIRST - Classification Variable: Item or Event Date of FIRST: 01/01/1806 More Information - Web URL: [Web Link]

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