St. Paul's Chapel

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St. Paul's Chapel, on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in Manhattan, New York City, is an Episcopal church built in 1903-07 and designed by I. N. Phelps Stokes, of the firm of Howells & Stokes. The exterior is in the Northern Italian Renaissance Revival style while the interior is Byzantine.Although the chapel was part of their master plan, it was the first building on the campus that was not designed by McKim, Mead & White. The chapel was the gift of Olivia Egleston Phelps Stokes and Caroline Phelps Stokes, the sisters of philanthropist Anson Phelps Stokes, in memory of their parents. Attached to their donation was the requirement that their nephew, I. N. Phelps Stokes, the author of The Iconography of Manhattan Island, design the building.DescriptionThe chapel's exterior of red brick with limestone trim - with terra cotta and bronze ornamentation - fits in with the original McKim, Mead buildings on the campus. The building's dome stands 91ft above the ground, and was possibly the first self-supporting dome in an American church. The 24 windows around the drum of the dome carry the names of prominent New York families connected with the university, such as Philip Van Cortlandt, DeWitt Clinton and William C. Rhinelander. The entablature on the chapel's front facade is PRO ECCLESIA DEI, meaning "For the Assembly of God". The gates wrought-iron gates in front came from the North Reformed Dutch Church, which closed in 1875.