The Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick Memorial Chapel, known as Kirkpatrick Chapel, is the chapel to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and located on the university's main campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the United States. Kirkpatrick Chapel is among the university's oldest extant buildings, and one of six buildings located on a historic section of the university's College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick known as the Queens Campus. Built in 1872 when Rutgers was a small, private liberal arts college, the chapel was designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh at the beginning of his career. Hardenbergh, a native of New Brunswick, was the great-great-grandson of Rutgers' first president, the Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh. It was the third of three projects that Hardenbergh designed for the college.
Kirkpatrick Chapel was named in honour of Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was the wife of Littleton Kirkpatrick, a local attorney and politician who was a member of the board of trustees of Rutgers College from 1841 until his death in 1859. When Sophia Kirkpatrick died in 1871, Rutgers was named as the residuary legatee of her estate. A bequest of $61,054.57 (2013: US$1,174,079.38) from her estate funded the construction of the chapel. According to Rutgers, this marked the first time in New Jersey history that an institution became a direct heir to an estate.
The chapel was designed in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style that was popular at the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States. Hardenbergh's design incorporated features common to fourteenth-century German and English Gothic churches. According to the New Jersey Historic Trust, the chapel's stained glass windows feature "some of the first opalescent and multicolored sheet glass manufactured in America." Four of the chapel's windows were created by the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Kirkpatrick Chapel is a contributing property of the Queens Campus Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 2, 1973.
For its first 30 years, the chapel was used as a college library and for holding daily chapel services. Although Rutgers was founded as a private college affiliated with the Dutch Reformed faith, today, it is a state university and nonsectarian. The chapel is available to students, alumni, and faculty of all faiths, and a variety of services are held throughout the academic term. It is also used for university events including convocation, concerts, alumni and faculty weddings, funerals, and lectures by prominent intellectuals and world leaders.
History
The Kirkpatrick family and Rutgers
When Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick (1802–1871) died on March 6, 1871, at the age of 68, she named Rutgers College as her estate's residuary legatee.Addresses at the inauguration of Austin Scott, Ph.D. as President of Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N.J. Wednesday February 4th, 1891 . (New Brunswick, Rutgers College, 1891). At that time, Rutgers was a small, private liberal arts college in New Brunswick, New Jersey, affiliated with the Dutch Reformed faith. Founded in 1766 as Queen's College, Rutgers is the eighth-oldest institution of higher education established in the United States. It was one of nine colleges founded in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War.Stoeckel, Althea. "Presidents, professors, and politics: the colonial colleges and the American revolution" , Conspectus of History (1976) 1(3):45–56.Chapter XXIII. Education. § 13. Colonial Colleges in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907–1921; online edition, 2000). Rutgers' website states that this bequest from Sophia Kirkpatrick's will was the first time in New Jersey legal history that an institution became a direct heir to an estate.
Sophia was the daughter of wealthy merchant and land investor Thomas Astley of Philadelphia.For information on Thomas Astley, see: MS.206 Merchants Collection (1773–1864) at the Johns Hopkins University Milton S. Eisenhower Library Special Collections in Baltimore, Maryland; further according to Guide to the Manuscript Collections of The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1991), the Claude Unger Collection, 1706–1937, the extensive Simon Gratz Collection (250A) held by the society includes many of Thomas and John Astley's records and correspondence regarding foreign trade and land transactions. See also Papers of George Woods, 1762–1827 and MG 147: John Anderson Papers, 1684–1904 at the Pennsylvania State Archives (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania). She married Littleton Kirkpatrick (1797–1859) on October 18, 1832.Wilson, James Grant. Memorials of Andrew Kirkpatrick, and his wife Jane Bayard . (New York: privately published, 1870). Littleton, an attorney and 1815 graduate of Princeton, was a member of a wealthy, prominent New Brunswick family and pursued a career in politics. They did not have any children.Kirkpatrick, Jacob (Rev.) and Hale, George. The Kirkpatrick Memorial: Or, Biographical Sketches of Father and Son and a Selection from the Sermons of the Rev. Jacob Kirkpatrick, Jr. (Philadelphia: Westcott & Thomson, 1867). During his career, Littleton Kirkpatrick was elected as county surrogate, mayor of New Brunswick, and as a Whig Party member of the United States House of Representatives during the Twenty-Eighth Congress (1843–1845).United States Congress. "Kirkpatrick, Littleton, (1797–1859)" in Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–present (online edition). Retrieved September 1, 2013. He served as a trustee of Rutgers College for 18 years from 1841 until his death in 1859.Rutgers College and Raven, John Howard (Rev.) (compiler). Catalogue of the Officers and Alumni of Rutgers College (originally Queen's College) in New Brunswick, N.J., 1766–1916. (Trenton, New Jersey: State Gazette Publishing Company, 1916). Sophia remained in New Brunswick after her husband's death. A devoted member of the city's First Presbyterian Church, she was later described as having "adorned her profession by her Christian graces and her many deeds of charity and beneficence to the needy and suffering."
Littleton Kirkpatrick was the son of Jane Bayard and Judge Andrew Kirkpatrick who served as Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He was grandson of Philadelphia merchant and statesman Colonel John Bayard (1738–1807) who served as speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, delegate to the Continental Congress, judge, mayor of New Brunswick, and was a Revolutionary War hero.United States Congress. "Bayard, John Bubenheim, 1738–1807" in Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–present (online edition), citing Wilson, James Grant. Colonel John Bayard (1738–1804) and the Bayard Family of America. (New York: Trow’s Printing and Bookbinding Co., 1885). Retrieved September 1, 2013.
The Kirkpatrick family had a long association with Queen's College and subsequently with Rutgers. The John Bogart Letters: Forty-two Letters written to John Bogart of Queen’s College now Rutgers College and Five Letters written by him, 1776–1782. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers College Publications, 1914); citing Somerset County Historical Quarterly. 1(4):250, and Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, 2nd Series, II:79. Several members of the family served as trustees or received degrees from the college, including the following: Littleton's father, Andrew Kirkpatrick (1756–1831), a 1775 graduate of Princeton, taught at the Queen's College Grammar School in 1782, received an honorary Masters (A.M.) from Queen's College in 1783, and served as a trustee from 1782 to 1809. Littleton's brother, John Bayard Kirkpatrick, Esq. (1795–1864), was an 1815 graduate of Rutgers when it was Queen's College. Littleton's nephew, Andrew Kirkpatrick (1844–1904), studied at Rutgers from 1860 to 1862 before receiving a bachelor's degree from Union College in 1863. Another nephew, John Bayard Kirkpatrick Jr. (1844–1912), received a bachelor's degree in 1866 and later served as college trustee (1892–1912). John Bayard Kirkpatrick III (1878–1961) received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1900.
Hardenbergh's design and construction
In 1870, the trustees of Rutgers College had decided to build a college chapel when the funds became available to do so.Demarest, William Henry Steele (Rev.). History of Rutgers College: 1776–1924. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers College, 1924).David Murray (compiler). A Memorial of Rev. William Henry Campbell, D.D., LL.D. Late President of Rutgers College. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Trustees of Rutgers College, 1894), 47. Previously, chapel services had been held inside Old Queen's, but as the student body expanded in the 1850s and 1860s a larger space was needed to accommodate such events. With the death of Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick in 1871 and Rutgers receiving $61,054.57 (2013: US$1,174,079.38) from her estate, the trustees directed those funds to the building of a university chapel.McCormick, Richard P. Rutgers: a Bicentennial History. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1966).
A young architect who had recently completed his apprenticeship and started his own firm, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (1847–1918), was hired by the trustees in 1870 to design an addition to the Rutgers College Grammar School then housed in Alexander Johnston Hall located across from the Queen's Campus on College Avenue."A.D." "Rutgers University's Alexander Johnston Hall on Starts and Fits: Great Architects of New York: Henry J. Hardenbergh (2005). Retrieved September 5, 2013. He charged the college $312 for his work.Glovin, Bill. "Castles in the Air" in Rutgers Magazine (Spring 2006), 35–41. Born and raised in New Brunswick, Hardenbergh received the contract through family connections. His great-great-grandfather, the Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh (1735–1790), was Rutgers' first president and one of its founders. Further, several members of his family were graduates, trustees, or otherwise associated with the school through the nineteenth century.Staff. "H. J. Hardenberg, Architect, is Dead" in The New York Times (March 14, 1918). Retrieved September 5, 2013. His grandfather, Rev. Jacob Janeway served as vice president of the college, and turned down the post of president in 1840. Hardenbergh studied for five years as an apprentice draftsman under German-American architect Detlef Lienau.Tolles, Bryant Franklin. Resort Hotels of the Adirondacks: The Architecture of a Summer Paradise, 1850-1950. (Lebanon, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2003), 162. Lienau was also connected with projects in the city of New Brunswick and later designed the Gardner A. Sage Library (1875) on the campus of New Brunswick Theological Seminary after Hardenbergh's earlier design for the seminary's Suydam Hall, built in 1873.Lienau, Detlef. Detlef Lienau architectural drawings and papers, circa 1835-1886 at Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University Libraries Archival Collections. Retrieved August 12, 2013.New Brunswick Theological Seminary. Gardner A. Sage Library . Retrieved August 12, 2013.