Wilson Chapel – an intimate chapel set in an architectural gem

Introduction: 

The William Croft Wilson Memorial Chapel was created in the early 1960s after a church committee studied three very different possible solutions to the need for a smaller and more intimate worship space. The result that we see today is a sensitive modification of the early 1890s sanctuary, thoughtfully achieved. Congregation member Bill Claflin reflected that he is the only surviving local member from the 1960 committee that was tasked with addressing the longstanding interest in creating a more intimate chapel. As we approach the Wilson Chapel semi-centennial in October 2014, Bill Claflin offers the following history on how Wilson Chapel came to be.  

See also his post: "A Memory" by William H. Claflin, 2014.

Sections below:

• Who is William Croft Wilson?
• The Chapel Committee
• History of the Design Proposals
• Implementations

Who is William Croft Wilson?

The new chapel was dedicated October 11, 1964 and named in memory of William Croft Wilson, the beloved Associate Minister and Committee member who died in 1963 following heart surgery. He was 32. His vibrant portrait painted posthumously by Dorothy G. Greenough (Mrs. William B. Greenough) hangs in the hallway. A book of his pastoral prayers was compiled by the church and is in library.
Please see the post dedicated to William Croft Wilson (1931-1963).

Associate Minister William Croft Wilson died at 32.

He made a deep & lasting impression on many,

who still feel they had been touched by a very special soul.

The Chapel Committee:

A Chapel Committee was appointed by the Prudential Committee in March 1962.  The question was: should the west transept be modified for use as a chapel?

This was not a simple yes or no problem. In the 1962-63 Central Congregational Church Annual  Report, Bill Claflin reveals the seriousness with which the Chapel Committee understood the impact of any potential modification. Their process began by restating the question: “In the five meetings held, the committee discussed the larger questions of the function of architecture in the worship service, the need for a chapel in our church, and the possible alternatives for providing a chapel.”  


In the end, the Chapel Committee did recommend modifying the west transept, but with design recommendations that have proven to be critically important for the ongoing success of Wilson Chapel. After 50 years of use, Wilson Chapel is noteworthy for being a sensitive, even minimalist, example of best practices in adapting an historic interior for new uses. 

Of the five Carrère & Hastings buildings in RI, only Central Congregational Church is still being used for its original purpose.

Committee Members:

1) Rev. Dr. Raymond E. Gibson (1924-2005): Committee Convener Reverend Gibson was Senior Minister at Central for 27 years (June 1961-88) and was succeeded by Rev. Rebecca L. Spencer (1988-present).

Rev. Gibson was deeply committed to social justice and chairman of the Rhode Island Committee to the U.S. Commission of Civil Rights for 13 years.  In recognition, Mayor David Cicilline appointed Raymond Gibson to the City of Providence Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Hall of Fame in 2007.

 Rev. Raymond Gibson seated at his desk in the pastor's study.
The portrait hangs in the Fireplace Room.
He was Senior Minister  from 1961-1988,
and was succeeded by Rev. Rebecca Spencer.

Raymond E. Gibson was born in Kentucky and attended Berea College there. He died in Hillsboro, New Hampshire where he had founded Gibson Pewter in 1966 as an outlet for his vocation as an artist and craftsman. Rev. Gibson did not make the communion service set and offering plates used at Central. However, Bill Calfin relates that "Ray did produce several chalices used for communion by church leaders in other countries." 

Rev. Ray Gibson as pewter craftsman with son Jon.
From the Gibson Pewter blog post on the history of this family business
now run by son Jon Gibson in Hillsborough, NH. 

It is interesting to note the connection between new ministers and building programs.  In October 1889, Rev. Edward C. Moore had been called to serve at Central Congregational Church - then located on Benefit St in the congregation’s original Thomas Tefft-designed church. Within 6 months, the congregation had voted to move to a new church to be built by Carrère & Hastings on Angell Street. In this case, Rev. Gibson was called in June 1961 and the Chapel Committee was formed March 1962. We are fortunate to have Rev. Gibson’s own memoir on how he understood the Chapel Committee's task. But a different new senior minister might have viewed this moment quite differently. 

See: Raymond E. Gibson. Ministry Recalled: The Central Years. (New Hampshire: Monadnock Publishers, 1992): 2-27, 43-53, 173.

2) Rev. William Croft Wilson (1931-1963): Rev. Wilson was born in Greenwich, CT in 1931 and graduated from Haverford College in 1954 and Yale Divinity School in 1957. He served at Central Congregational Church as Assistant and then Associate Minister from 1957 until his untimely death on November 6, 1963 at age 32. Wilson Chapel was dedicated in October 1964 and named in his memory.  Please see the post dedicated to William Croft Wilson (1931-1963).  [Please send memories, photos, comments to NancyAustinPhD at gmail.]

Rev. William Croft Wilson, served at Central 

from 1957 until his death in 1963 at age 32.

Photo - courtesy of Bill Claflin.

3) William H. Claflin (b.1928): Bill Claflin was one of two design professionals on the Chapel Committee; he is also a fourth generation member of Central Congregation Church.

After graduating from the Harvard GSD (Graduate School of Design) in 1952 with a degree in Urban Planning, Bill Claflin began his long planning career working in Rhode Island's smaller communities. From 1959-1967 he served as Director of Planning for the City of Pawtucket, and then as a planner with the New York State Office of Planning Coordination from 1967-1971. Finally, he was Deputy Commissioner of the Milwaukee Department of Planning  from 1971-1975.

In 1956, after a decade away, he and his wife, Eunice Burr Couch Claflin, moved back to Providence - where they both had been raised. Mr. Claflin's great-grandparents, George Lyman & Louisa Sisson Whitman Claflin, had been  founding (charter) members of Central Congregational Church when the church was gathered in March 1852.  His grandfather, Arthur W. Claflin, had been a Deacon from 1906 to 1926, and his father, Albert W. Claflin served from 1931-1937. Mrs. Claflin's father, Herbert Newell Couch (1899-1959),  had been an esteemed Latin professor of classics at Brown University from 1930-1959. 

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Claflin.
Bill Claflin is a Harvard-trained urban planner.  His wife, Eunice Burr Couch Claflin,
was the only child of a famous Brown University, Professor of Classics,
Herbert Newell Couch (1899-1959). All have been church Deacons.

In 1962, when the Chapel Design Committee began its work, Bill Claflin was in his early thirties and re-establishing himself in Rhode Island as an urban planning professional. One of the successes he recalls is the Slater Mill urban renewal and historic preservation project of 1961-1971 which created a more park-like setting for the historic Slater Mill.

As Planning Director for Pawtucket from 1957-1967, Bill Claflin
worked to secure a more park-like setting for the historic Slater Mill.

How best to divide Wilson Chapel and the sanctuary?
Should a partition be low (as built)
or a permanent 6'-8' wall?

Bill Claflin's urban planning background helped him communicate to the Chapel Committee
why it was so important to preserve the views in and out of the west transept where Wilson Chapel was to be built. 

Wilson Chapel is a flexible space that can be made to feel self-contained.

Or as one with the overall space of the sanctuary.

4) Lloyd W. Kent (1907-1992): Lloyd Kent was an architect with the modernist firm of Kent, Cruise & Aldrich. Three examples of Kent’s aesthetic during the time the Chapel Committee was working are:

1) 1954 – the Edgewood Congregational Church (1788 Broad St., Edgewood/Cranston); 2) 1960 – the dormitory that is now Brown University’s Perkins Hall (154 Power St. between Hope & Governor, Providence); and 3) 1969 –the Brown Office Building & Brown Bookstore by Kent, Cruise & Associates, on the corner of Angell & Thayer. (244 Thayer St., Providence).

Edgewood Congregational Church, 1788 Broad St.
Designed by Creer, Kent, Cruise & Aldrich, 1954.

Brown University's Perkins Hall, 154 Power St.
Designed by Kent, Cruise & Aldrich, 1960.

Brown University Office Building & Book Store, 244 Thayer St
Designed by Kent, Cruise & Associates, 1969.

5) Rev. Richard Shaper: 

See: Raymond E. Gibson. Ministry Recalled: The Central Years. (New Hampshire: Monadnock Publishers, 1992): 32-42.

6) William Barbour Farnsworth, Sr. (1891-1964): Chair of the Chapel Committee, Bill Farnsworth had long been interested in having a chapel in the West Transept. Bill Claflin remembers him as "a wonderful, decent man who contributed much to the discussion in the Committee. ... His wife's name was Elizabeth, a stalwart along with my mother of the Women's Home Missionary Association."

7) William T. Brightman (1934-2013): Mr. Brightman passed away recently and is survived by his wife, Martha. He attended Brown University and was a former President of Old Colony Newport National Bank.

William T. Brightman (1934-2013)

8) Thomas Reed: This Committee Member remains a church member, but lives in Florida. He and his wife, Betsy, sang in the choir.

9) Mrs. William H. Boardman: no definite information.

History of the Design Proposals:

1) In 1928 Central Congregational Church embarked on a major capital campaign ($275,000). These funds would be used to build the Sunday School building ($105K), enlarge what is now the Fireplace Room ($83K), and also construct a separate Chapel on the west lawn ($40K). The church membership had grown 146% since 1893 to 1406 members, and an expansion seemed justified. Of course, no one knew the Stock Market crash of 1929 and then the Depression of the 1930s and then World War II were going to alter the game until the 1950s, if not forever.

Church complex plans for 1928.
Note the proposed 100-seat Chapel
 (far left)  fronting on Angell St.

For the design of the proposed new free-standing Chapel, the Committee appointed in October 1927 hired the architects of the newly-designed Providence County Courthouse.

The 1960 Committee did consider the option of of a new and separate chapel on the west lawn, set close to the sidewalk, as in the Jackson, Robertson & Adams design proposal of 1928 seen below.

Bing Map download, 2014.
Aerial view of Central Congregational Church

1928 Chapel proposal by Jackson, Robertson & Adams.
The massing is similar to the firm's 1926 winning proposal
for the Providence County Courthouse (below)
between South Main, Benefit, and College Hill (1924-1933).

Providence County Courthouse winning proposal, 1927.
From Buildings on Paper (1982): 104.

Proposed 1928 Chapel (interior view).

2) In the 1940s, a proposal was made to create a chapel in the west transept. Plans were drawn and hung in the Gallery for the congregation to comment on. [Are there visual records of this proposal?]

This 1940 proposal was the basis for the eventual solution, but with two major differences. In the 1940  proposal:  1) the pews would have been permanently removed in the west transept and replaced with individual wooden chairs, and 2) the chapel was imagined as a separate space created by permanently partitioning off the west transept section of the church. It would not read as part of the whole church, but as a kind of unknowable or hidden space "beyond" a partition.

3) The third option considered by the 1960s committee was an “outside the box” exploratory design proposal to create a kind of theater in the round. This proposal kept the two side wings pews facing the center. But then - quite dramatically - proposed moving the chancel (the pulpit, communion table, etc.) down under the middle of the dome. More can be said here about Chapel Committee member Rev. Dr. Richard Shaper's recent graduate education at Union Theological Seminary in the innovative new (1956) Program in Religious Drama. [See Gibson, Ministry Recalled (1992): 32-42.]

Implementation:

Bill Claflin's "A Memory" reports on the next stage of the process: "An architect, George Fraser, was requested to draw specific plans and estimate costs. His first sketches showed pews facing north towards the Prayer Window, making workable provisions for entrances, narthex waiting area, ministers’ entrance, and use of a number of the pews during services in the main sanctuary."

Rev. Gibson with George Fraser, the architect
chosen to implement the Chapel Committee proposal.
From Gibson, Ministry Recalled (1992): 173.

Fraser had been a partner in the firm that designed the 1928 freestanding Chapel.

George Fraser had been a partner in the architectural firm that had designed Central's unbuilt 1928 chapel.  From 1956-1961, Jackson, Robertson & Adams had been renamed Fraser & Henthorne to reflect the names of the firm's surviving younger partners. By 1963, George Fraser appears to have been working independently when the Chapel Committee turned to him to develop plans for a new chapel formed within the existing West Transept.

The West Transept reoriented toward the Prayer Window, 1964.

View into the East Transept with pews facing the center.
This was the condition in the West Transept
before the creation of Wilson Chapel in 1964.

When Less is More: 

Minor Changes Carefully Considered

Pews: As George Fraser's plans were developed, the architect on the committee, Lloyd Kent, recognized that the re-oriented pews would work better without the dividers that made it impossible to move from one aisle to the other. So, Lloyd Kent suggested modifying the existing pews to remove the dividers. This seemingly small detail was executed and has had a big impact in ease of use. In a delightful gesture, the excess pew parts were used to make freestanding "pew chairs" that are now in the altar area of Wilson Chapel.

The wooden divider on each pew in the west transept was removed.
Note the remaining bracing on the rear of the pew seat backs.

Pew dividers remain in the central section, as visible here.

Left-over pews were re-used to fabricate these freestanding "pew chairs".

Visual vs. Actual Room Dividers:

The 1940s proposal created a chapel by cutting off the west transept with the construction of a permanent partition. Bill Claflin was the voice on the 1960s committee always seeking to find a win/win solution crafted from the visual tool kit of design principles. A low partition and flexible lighting could allow the chapel space to feel like its own place when in use - a "win". Additionally, as another "win", at all times, the chapel would be visually understood as part of the whole, or not even be understood as a chapel. These pews are available during Sunday services and are often used at Easter, for example. During the chapel design process, the majority of the Chapel Committee came to visualize the low partition as an achievable, successful solution. It may seem like a minor design decision, but creating a chapel within the sanctuary - using a low partition - is a good example of doing less to achieve more within an historic church interior.

The low partition, as built.

Place Making through Lighting: 

The low divider and candlelight successfully transform the large sanctuary into a small intimate chapel, as was desired. 

Wilson Chapel as lit during the Lenten Baptism Service,  2014.

Bibliography:

A Living Church. (Providence: Central Congregational Church, 1928).

Buildings on Paper: Rhode Island Architectural Drawings, 1825-1945 (1982).

Claflin, William H. "Chapel Committee." Central Congregational Church Annual Report, 1962-63.

Gibson, Raymond E. Ministry Recalled: The Central Years. (New Hampshire: Monadnock Press, 1992). [not online]

See, A.B., Jr.  [anon.] Naked Before God, Out of Darkness Unto Light, p.81-87. [Bill Claflin has pointed out errors in this book’s reflections on William Croft Wilson.]

Wilson, William Croft. Pastoral Prayers. (Providence: Central Congregational Church, 1964)Available from Amazon.com here.

Related Posts:

•   (Top) Wilson Chapel – an intimate chapel set in an architectural gem

•   "A Memory" by William H. Claflin, 2014

•   William Croft Wilson (1931-1963)

•   Five Carrère & Hastings buildings in Rhode Island

•   The 1890-93 Carrère & Hastings design of Central Congregational Church, Providence