Stanford University: Memorial Church

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Stanford Memorial Church is located on the Main Quad at the center of the Stanford University campus in Stanford. It was built during the American Renaissance by Jane Stanford as a memorial to her husband Leland. Designed by architect Charles A. Coolidge, a student of Henry Hobson Richardson, the church has been called "the University's architectural crown jewel".
Designs for the church were submitted to Jane Stanford and the university trustees in 1898, and it was dedicated in 1903. The building is Romanesque in form and Byzantine in its details, inspired by churches in the region of Venice, especially, Ravenna. Its stained glass windows and extensive mosaics are based on religious paintings the Stanfords admired in Europe. The church has five pipe organs, which allow musicians to produce many styles of organ music. Stanford Memorial Church has withstood two major earthquakes, in 1906 and 1989, and was extensively renovated after each.
Stanford Memorial Church was the earliest and has been "among the most prominent" non-denominational churches on the West Coast of the United States. Since its dedication in 1903, the church's goal has been to serve the spiritual needs of the university in a non-sectarian way. The church's first chaplain, David Charles Gardner, began a tradition of leadership which has guided the development of Stanford University's spiritual, ethical, and academic relation to religion. The church's chaplains were instrumental in the founding of Stanford's religious studies department, moving Stanford from a "secular university" at the middle of the century to "the renaissance of faith and learning at Stanford" in the late 1960s, when the study of religion at the university focused on social and ethical issues like race and the Vietnam War.
The facade has two stories, At the lower level are three arched doorways. In the upper level is a large central arched window flanked by tall narrow triplet windows. Above the windows rises a gable, richly decorated with a mosaic of a biblical theme and surmounted by a cross.
The building is of very large scale, and every part of the interior is covered with mosaic or carved decoration. In the chancel, a priest officiates for a bride and groom with eleven attendants.
Jane Stanford commissioned the church and its artwork, and said, "While my whole heart is in the University, my soul is in that church".