A Fisheye View Of The Chapel Of Hope

by Lisa Wooten

Title

A Fisheye View Of The Chapel Of Hope

Artist

Lisa Wooten

Medium

Photograph - Photographs

Description

Built from 1963 to 1965, the Chapel of Hope is one of the more recent buildings on the South Carolina State Hospital campus in Columbia.[1] The chapel is a Georgian style building constructed of unfinished red brick with a white, wooden Greek Revival portico at its entrance. The chapel’s tall steeple was built of the same red brick and includes a tall painted white spire.[2]
The chapel’s design is not unique; it is quite similar in style to the Centennial Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church that predates the chapel by 10 years and is located only three blocks away. However, the Chapel of Hope’s multifunctional use was significantly different than other churches within Columbia. First, the chapel was built as a nondenominational place of worship for patients, family members, and hospital staff.[3] Second, a wing connected to the rear of the building housed the Academy for Pastoral Education where chaplains, many from South Carolina, learned the complexities of providing religious services in a clinical environment.[4] Finally, the church provided essential administrative space for the chaplains who worked at the hospital.
The chapel served its community for forty years, but the need for a chapel and a chaplaincy date to the early days of the hospital. Before a chaplain was assigned to the hospital, Superintendent John Waring Parker, the hospital’s first superintendent, conducted the hospital’s religious services in the Robert Mills Building.[5] In an 1842 Board of Regents report, Chairman Maximillian LaBorde noted a need for clergy support and requested assistance from Columbia area churches to help officiate services for the hospital’s growing population.[6] Reverend Elias Hort left Columbia’s Ebeneezer Lutheran Church in 1844 and became the hospital’s first chaplain.[7] In a time when asylums simultaneously perceived religion as either a cause or a cure of mental illness; the hospital viewed religious services and chaplain ward visitations as essential in the treatment of the patients. [8]
As the hospital’s patient population and campus grew, so did the religious mission and the need for a dedicated space in support of the chaplaincy. The chapel remained in the Robert Mills Building until 1873 and then temporarily moved to two wooden buildings formerly used by African-American patients behind the Babcock Building.[9] The chapel operated in these buildings until 1885 when it moved to the third floor of the Babcock Building.[10] The Babcock Building location offered a larger area for worship and featured stained glass windows that remain today. However, the stairs were considered hazardous for the elderly and the disabled coming to attend service.[11] A Report of Chaplain dated Oct. 31, 1888 described an all-encompassing religious mission that grew despite the space limitations, and included ward visits, religious services, funeral services, lectures, and prayer meetings. In that report, Chaplain Edwin Bolles also praised the donations of books and the volunteers from the Columbia area clergy.[12]
The chapel remained in Babcock until the multipurpose Benet Auditorium was built in 1956, which provided a larger facility for services and was located at a convenient ground floor level. To assist the shorthanded chaplaincy and to better connect the hospital to the community, Superintendent William Hall initiated the “Good Neighbor Program,” with churches of several denominations adopting 60 wards within the hospital, assisting approximately 3,000 patients with services and clergy visits.[13]
Chaplains held multiple Sunday and weekday services in the Benet Auditorium as well as the Allan, Saunders, Cooper and Preston Buildings. Two part-time music directors led six choirs and choruses with 103 patients. Chaplains made more than 16,000 individual contacts, aided by volunteer Columbia clergy. The chaplaincy initiated an education program to teach chaplains how to serve in a clinical environment. Hospital chaplains also visited several Columbia area churches to share their knowledge about working with the mentally ill.[14] The 1958 Annual Report reported this growing mission developed by the chaplaincy and the continued pleas for a suitable building. The chaplain mission grew far beyond the capability of available buildings and while the Board of Regents had approved the request to build a chapel, the adequate funds did not exist to build.[15]
Funding for the chapel was well underway, beginning as early as 1943, under the leadership of Superintendent C.F. Williams and Chaplain James Obert Kempson. Kempson joined the hospital in 1933 and served 30 years as the Chief Chaplain. Aggressive canvasing for donations by Williams and Kempson brought contributions from many churches throughout South Carolina; family members and hospital staff, and Columbia community members.[16] The first donations were reportedly by “a few white patients,” as described in a historical background article published in the Palmetto Variety.[17] While the hospital also pursed funds for a second chapel to serve the predominately African-American patient population at the hospital’s State Park extension, the priority went to the main campus chapel. The SC General Assembly matched the chapel’s on-hand fund of $30,000 in 1952 and eventually provided another $140,000 in 1962.[18] With enough money to build, on June 11, 1962, Superintendent William Hall submitted a formal application to construct the chapel.[19]
Lafaye, Fair, and Lafaye and Associates created several plans for the chapel over the years, changing styles to reflect the predominate taste of the period in which they were drawn.[20] In a memo to Superintendent Hall dated July 16, 1963, the architects described a design change from “contemporary” to “classic revival” with the note, “…a spacious portico has been added to the Chapel and a tower of proper dignity and detail has been designed.”[21] Without the portico and tower, the chapel might have resembled a Quaker meetinghouse. The red brick exterior and portico helped to visually connect the chapel to the other dominant hospital buildings, while the tall white steeple identified the building as a traditional house of worship.
A small section of land on Pickens Street, across the street from the Benet Auditorium and Horger Library, was chosen as the location of the future chapel. Pickens Street is one of the major streets of the campus running directly in front of Babcock, and connecting the Robert Mills Building at the south end of the street and the Williams Building at the north end.
The chapel groundbreaking was Dec. 8, 1963; and the cornerstone ceremony was September 20, 1964.[22] The contents of the cornerstone included items that symbolically represented the intent of the chapel as a multidenominational house of worship, with Jewish, Protestant and Catholicism being the dominant religions represented.[23] The first service for patients and staff was on Feb. 7, 1965; a week later the chapel held a dedication ceremony on Feb. 14, 1965, a ceremony open to campus personnel as well as worshippers from the Columbia community. The final cost of building the Chapel of Hope and the attached wing for the Academy for Pastoral Education was $375,000 with an additional $48,279 for furnishings.[24] In comments from the dedication day, Superintendent Hall reinforced the hospital’s consistent stance of religion as a tool used by the hospital in treating patients throughout the years; “at this hospital we are firmly persuaded that a sound spirit is vital to a sound mind. The health of the mind is closely attuned to the health of the soul.”[25]
The red brick facing used in the building of the chapel, its steeple and the education center was repurposed original handmade brick dating from the 1827 twelve-foot-tall wall that enclosed the campus. Hospital administrative leaders helped lower the wall in 1962 to remove the symbolic and physical separation between the hospital campus and the Columbia community. Documents from the time of the chapel’s construction often refer to the reuse of these bricks as the “wall of separation” rising to become “the spire of the spirit.”[26] A bell that was once located at the hospital’s main entrance, used to announce the hour of the day from 1896 to 1952, was also added to the steeple.[27] The bell continued to toll the hours of the day and was used in support of church services.
The interior of the chapel continued with a classical design and incorporated such simple elements as pilasters and door pediments. Approximately 600 people could be seated in the large nave that made up the main body of the chapel. Tall side windows and white paint assured a well-lit space. Unique to its design and especially for the area of Columbia was a moveable altar designed to accommodate the specific service layouts of Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths.[28]
The wing, named the Kempson Center, connected at the rear of the building and included rooms in support of pastoral education, administrative offices for the chaplains, and several rooms for smaller religious meetings. Also within the center, the Hort Room resembled a small church parlor and is named for the first chaplain of the SC State Hospital.[29] The chapel was built on a piece of land that already had mature trees and Columbia’s Garden Club of South Carolina donated the “Colonial Garden,” an area of trees, hedges and that filled the space between the front door of the chapel and the front door of the Kempson Center.[30] The Columbia community continued its support of the chapel by donating money towards altar vases and an organ in 1969.[31]
The chapel made it possible for the hospital to grow its mission, providing worship services and educating clergy in clinical pastoral care. While chaplain reports and SC State Hospital Annual Reports fall short of details in later years, the 1976 to 1977 Annual Report from the SC Department of Health described a growing mission deeply rooted in the community. The chaplaincy included four full time chaplains and several retired clergy from the community that together accounted for the more than 800 services in the chapel and the wards. A yearlong Clinical Pastoral Residency program trained and returned three chaplains to local churches. The Pastoral Education Service reported 272 community clergy and students participating in education programs.[32] The state’s investment in the chapel seemed to pay off with local clergy receiving education and returning to the Columbia community, while patients had the option of worshipping in a group at the chapel or receiving personal chaplain visits in their wards.
While later reports from the chaplaincy are not available, the assumption is that the chapel served its patient population until the closure of the facilities, providing chapel services and educating the local clergy. The building is now shuttered and in disrepair, but is presumably serviceable and a good candidate for rehabilitation.
The current development plan by the Hughes Development Corporation preserves the Chapel of Hope, but does not describe a scheduled plan for its reuse.[33] Based on its age and condition, the chapel can continue as a house of worship, although there are already several churches deeply rooted in the city and there is no significant benefit to adding an additional church to the area. The building’s conversion to a multi-use town hall or community space may be more beneficial to the future neighborhood. The First Congregational Church in Hartland Township, Michigan, with a similar Greek Revival architecture, is now the Hartland Music Hall and may serve as an inspiration for any future adaptive reuse project for the Chapel of Hope. Google

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June 3rd, 2019

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