Vox Clamantis Once Again

By Kale Bongers | Friday, July 22, 2005

Rollins Chapel sits unobtrusively across from the northeast corner of the Green, sandwiched between the attention-grabbing white facades of Dartmouth Row and the grandiose pillars of Webster Hall. A quiet, somewhat off-the-beaten-path place for reflection, Rollins is the College's nonsectarian chapel, used by Christians, Muslims, and Jews, among others. The chapel's interior is simple, yet elegant, a cavernous, open space minimally adorned with religious ornamentation.

One would never expect such a simple space to have known fame. Yet the humble chapel hides great treasures—a series of stained-glass windows over a century old, now languishing, un-displayed and boarded over for decades. Soon, however, these windows will be restored to their original magnificence and displayed with the honor they deserve.

During the construction of Rollins during the 1880's, a series of windows were commissioned by various donors; each was dedicated to a past Dartmouth president and was to be installed in the apse of the new chapel. Eleazar Wheelock's pane, the central window of the five in the apse, prominently displayed John the Baptist, the original voice crying out in the wilderness, in homage to the College's motto. Other donors soon gave windows dedicated to other early Dartmouth presidents Brown, Tyler, Lord and Smith, laboriously imported from such faraway places as Edinburgh (from the James Ballantine and Son studio) and Munich (from the famed Royal Bavarian Stained Glass Works), as well as the closer Donald McDonald workshop in Boston. The tradition continued, and with new presidents came new windows. However, the tradition came to an end with the presidency of Samuel Bartlett, whose window, designed in the New York studio of Louis Tiffany, was installed in 1905 in the south transept.

During a renovation of Rollins in 1965, several of the chapel's nineteen windows (specifically, the first five presidential-dedicated windows, located in the apse) were boarded up, for reasons that are now somewhat unclear. During that 1965 restoration, many significant changes were made to the chapel's interior. While a subsequent 1986 renovation sought to bring the chapel closer to its original state for its one-hundredth anniversary, the five windows remained sealed off. Given the artistic significance of several of the windows, this was a huge disappointment. Since that time, the windows can only be seen in assorted old photographs archived in a lonely vertical file in Rauner Special Collections Library.

In the past several years, the windows began to become a topic of concern for many, who feared that the windows would effectively be destroyed without immediate restorative action (the life of a stained glass window is approximately one hundred years) and who wanted them displayed once more. These sentiments were met with hostility from many non-Christian campus groups, who did not want their worship space to contain images of Saints John the Baptist, Paul, Peter, John and Andrew.

Yet many were apathetic; Hillel member Evan Mendelson noted that "I understand that some people may be offended by the religious figures portrayed in Rollins, but I personally don't take issue with the art because I don't view it as an endorsement, or rejection, of any religion." Despite a silent majority supporting the windows' exposition, nothing was done.

Concerned, Student Assembly budgeted funds for an expert to assess the state of the windows. The report was a damning indictment of the College's care over the previous forty years. Three of the five windows were broken, and all were in desperate need of repair. Yet an opportunity remained—the specialist claimed the windows could survive another five to ten years before becoming irreparable.

The College, after decades of abiding by a wrong decision, has finally made the correct one. A recently convened committee comprised of several students and College chaplain Richard Crocker, among others, has decided that the five apsidal windows will be taken down, restored (at a cost of approximately one hundred thousand dollars), and returned to their original locations for display; the plan calls for this to be accomplished by the summer of 2006. As a compromise to the various non-Christian groups who use the chapel, drapes will be installed over the windows, allowing them to be covered or revealed according to the desires of the group. It's a simple solution that will nevertheless solve any perceived conflicts with the chapel's non-sectarian policy.

After four decades, the stunning century-old art will be easily accessible for all to admire; Rollins will finally be returned to its intended grandeur. The only disappointment is that it has taken so long to reach such a simple solution.

Vox Clamantis Once Again

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