History

Swedenborg Chapel History

Completed in 1901, this chapel was commissioned as the chapel for the New Church Theological School as well as the Cambridge Society of the New Jerusalem, which formed around the students and faculty of the school. The School was located in the Treadwell-Sparks House, named for former Harvard president, Jared Sparks. The house was originally located next to the chapel at 48 Quincy Street (seen to the right of the chapel above). However, after purchasing the Sparks House property back from the theological school, Harvard moved it to Kirkland Street in 1968, next to Adolphus Busch Hall.

Design

The chapel was designed by Herbert Langford Warren (1857-1917) who was a founding member of the Cambridge Society. Warren studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, worked for the famous Boston architect H.H. Richardson, started his own practice became a prominent member of the Boston-based Arts and Crafts movement, and taught architecture at Harvard from 1893-1917. He is credited as the founder of Harvard’s department of architecture, which is now part of the Graduate School of Design.

In the 1960s, when the theological school sold the Treadwell-Sparks House back to Harvard and moved from Cambridge to Newton, an annex was built to enable the chapel to support the full life of the congregation, providing basics like toilet facilities as well as meeting and social spaces – previously, the social gatherings of the congregation occurred at the Treadwell-Sparks House.