With the completion earlier this month of the St. Katharine Drexel Chapel for Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans, Cesar Pelli and the architectural firm he heads have added the first house of worship–among its smallest projects at 12,000 square feet–to their vast portfolio. The project represents a long-held goal of the firm’s founder and of the university as well—the original blueprints for the university, founded in 1925, included a chapel that was never built.
“I have always been attracted to the idea of designing a building with a spiritual purpose,” says Pelli, whose New Haven- based firm, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects, has many skyscrapers in its roster, such as the Petronas Towers (1994) in Kuala Lumpur. The architect says he was further inspired to take on the chapel project after meeting Xavier’s president, Dr. Norman Francis, and hearing the story of the university’s founder, Katharine Drexel. A nun from a wealthy Philadelphia family, Drexel founded Xavier in 1925; the only historically black Catholic university.
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