Danforth continued

“Danforth is yours, if you are great enough to discover it. It will not be easily or thoughtlessly owned, and never by the small of spirit.”
— Jeanne Ackley, Danforth dedication, April 2, 1946

The Gothic Revival style building that nestles among shrubs and shade trees at the intersection of 14th Street, Jayhawk Boulevard and Lilac Lane is one of at least a dozen small campus chapels built with the help of the Danforth Foundation of St. Louis. In a 1944 letter to Chancellor Deane Malott, c’21, announcing the decision to donate $5,000, William H. Danforth, the foundation president and chairman of Ralston Purina Co., described his vision for the project.

“For a long time we have felt a need of a small chapel on college campuses. ... Now if we can prove that these chapels are of great value in lifting spiritual influence on a college campus, we might be interested in putting up a few of them in different parts of the country, and we would hope to do so on your campus.”

The letter outlined Danforth’s expectations that KU’s chapel, like the three built before it, would display a copy of Heinrich Hoffman’s painting “Christ in Gethsemane” and a marble tablet in the narthex with a specific inscription: “The Danforth Chapel—dedicated to the worship of God with the prayer that here in communion with the Highest those who enter may acquire the spiritual power to aspire nobly, adventure daringly, serve humbly.” The chapel should be small, Danforth wrote, beautified with stained glass windows and have as its “central figure” a cross on the chancel.

Edward Tanner, e’16, KU’s first architecture graduate, designed the chapel, and his plans called for Mount Oread limestone. German prisoners of war from a local camp—many of them stonemasons before the war—were drafted for labor, and they advised their supervisors that the campus stone was too hard for shaping. A business professor located a crumbling rock fence on a Douglas County farm, and a trade was arranged to supply the farmer with barbed wire in exchange for the stone.

Leone Sandow was among those closely monitoring the construction as it neared completion in the spring of 1946. The KU sophomore walked by the site from time to time to check progress. She and Robert Fisher, c’48, g’49, PhD’52, had scheduled their wedding—Danforth’s first—for late March.

She wasn’t the only one keeping an eye on things. As she sat listening to a psychology lecture one day, she was summoned into the hallway. “It was Mr. Danforth wanting to see me,” recalls Sandow Fisher, c’49, “just to see why I chose the chapel.”

The reasons she gave surely ring familiar to many Danforth brides who followed: She was a student, she wanted a small wedding and the little chapel on the Hill seemed perfect. There was just something about it. “I liked the appearance of the chapel,” she says. “It just appealed to me.”

During the rehearsal, painters were still applying final touches. On March 20, 1946, Sandow wore a dress of pale blue crepe and Fisher stood up in his Navy uniform as they exchanged vows in a sparkling new chapel that would not be dedicated until April 2. Even before it officially opened, Danforth was christened with a wedding. Read more.