Your gaze meets Battell Chapel, the largest chapel of Yale University, rising on the Old Campus. Built in 1874–76 with gifts from Joseph Battell and other family members, this masonry building of New Jersey brownstone and blue Ohio sandstone decorative trim replaced two earlier chapel buildings and once housed daily chapel services that were mandatory for Yale College students until 1926, when the all-male, mostly Protestant ritual ended. In the 1870s, Battell Chapel, Durfee Hall, and Farnam Hall were erected together as part of a program to build up the perimeter of Old Campus and to separate it from the rest of the city; all three, by the same architect, were among the first Yale buildings to be named for donors rather than for function, location, or legislative funding.
Step inside in your imagination and picture the flat coffered ceiling of wooden beams, painted blue and highlighted with gold leaf over an auditorium whose interior wood paneling and pews are solid oak. Look up to find the chapel’s iconography: on the upper pier walls appear the symbols of the Greek Cross and the Shield. Notice the coffered ceiling above, painted blue and touched with gold leaf, and the Greek Cross and Shield carved into the upper pier walls.