Wednesday, March 10, 2010

ANTHONY CHAPEL



This is a chapel we visited this weekend. It is in Garvan Woodland Gardens. GWG is in Hot Springs, Arkansas. It is a 210 acre botanical garden. It is operated by the University of Arkansas.
Earlier, somewhere in this blog, I wrote about two chapels in Northwest Arkansas which were designed by Fay Jones. Fay Jones was an Arkansas native who studied under Frank Lloyd Wright. The Anthony Chapel looks a lot like those two chapels, Thorncrown and Cooper Memorial Chapel. That's because the Anthony Chapel was designed by the two Architects who now operate the firm founded by Jones.

The Anthony Chapel cost $5.8 million and took two years to build. The chapel is 138' long and 60' tall. There are 1,230 sq. ft. of glass skylights. 5,300 flagstones were laid for the floor and sidewalk. There are 4,800 sq. ft. of stone walls and 62,500 sq. ft. of southern yellow pine lumber used in the construction. The roof covers 11,000 sq. ft.

This chapel was a sight to behold, like the other two it soared up into the trees surrounding it. Right off one can see the structural design of the Anthony Chapel is much more complex than the others. You can see the detail in this photo taken from behind the alter looking toward the front doors.



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