June 11, 2012
Monday Geology Picture(s): Building Stones in Rollins Chapel
Posted by Evelyn Mervine
Rollins Chapel at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH.
Last week my husband and I visited my alma mater Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Dartmouth has a beautiful campus, and one of my favorite buildings on the campus is Rollins Chapel. The chapel is a multi-faith spiritual center that is used by students and alumni for a variety of purposes. The chapel is used for spiritual services, quiet reflection, weddings, seminars, speeches, and other events. When I was a student at Dartmouth several years ago, the climbing club even used the outside of Rollins Chapel as a bouldering or “buildering” location.
I’m not religious, but I enjoyed and continue to enjoy visiting Rollins Chapel for quiet reflection and also to admire the chapel’s beautiful building stones. The chapel was built with large, rounded blocks of gray-white granite that are complemented by rusty red, more square blocks of sandstone. The chapel also contains some stunning stained glass windows.
Here are some more pictures from our visit to Rollins Chapel last week:
Close-up of the outside of the chapel #1.
Close-up of the outside of the chapel #2.
Inside of the chapel.
A detail of the inside of the chapel.
A closer look at some decorative trim inside the chapel.
Another view inside the chapel.
Carved sandstone inside the chapel.
I highly recommend a visit to Rollins Chapel if you’re ever on the Dartmouth College campus.
I am trying to relocate a staircase in Rollins Chapel at Dartmouth that may have since been removed. 40+ years ago there was a small room used, at one time, for an office/library by the DACF(Dartmouth Area Christian Fellowship) and the stairs were in that office and went down into the unfinished basement of the Chapel
Facing the back (directly opposite the main entrance)of the interior, and to the right, you can see the door to this space in photographs of the inside of the chapel. Does the staircase still exist? Are there any photographs of the interior of the office? Would help solidify a few currently shaky old memories.