Chapel History & Architecture
Chapel History & Architecture
Though a room in the "Old Main" Soldiers Home was set aside for religious services, the nearly 3,000 veterans living in Milwaukee's Soldiers Home village in the late 1800s needed a separate structure because Old Main was becoming too crowded. Veterans built it for themselves, funding the project with money from the Home’s Post Fund (accumulated from sales of products made or grown at the Home Store), including their pensions upon death (as small as $2.67).
Fellow Civil War veteran and celebrated Milwaukee architect Henry Koch designed a Queen Anne style wood frame and shingle chapel with a steep roof with multiple gables, dormers, and turrets.
It opened September 22, 1889, as a multi-denominational chapel with seating for 600, one of the first such facilities built on federal government land and reportedly the first in Wisconsin.
The interior features separate appointments for Catholic and Protestant services and magnificent stained glass windows, with Tiffany-quality glass, each constructed with dedicatory insets near the bottom in memory of the various families and individuals who donated money to the Chapel.
As veterans of different religious affiliations continued to use the Chapel, housing was established near the Chapel for its chaplains. The Protestant Chaplain’s Quarters was erected in 1901 (Bldg. 16), which is part of the Chapel Restoration project, and the Catholic Chaplain’s Quarters in 1909 (Bldg. 14), which houses VA Medical Center staff.
The Chapel also featured fresco wall murals of intricate vines, according to another famous Soldiers Home historian, prominent Wisconsin author Elizabeth Corbett—who published 40 books in the 1900s and grew up on the Soldiers Home grounds as daughter of a worker. These murals are being uncovered as part of Soldiers Home Foundation’s restoration efforts with a goal to reopen the veterans’ chapel for veteran funerals and community use by 2012.
Built in the shape of a cross, the Chapel features a steeple and bell tower and is sided with a combination of clapboards and shingles. (See photos) A one-story sacristy wing features a Swedish gabled roof. The Chapel still contains its elliptical arched, wood truss system that spans between two rows of columns supporting the gable roof.
The Chapel celebrated two historically-significant time periods, one between 1889 and World War I when it was used extensively by the VA, military and military organization chaplains; and a second from 1934-1941 when the Chapel was home to retired Milwaukee Lutheran pastor and military chaplain Rev. Gustav Stearns, who served as both National Chaplain for the Military Order of the Purple Heart (as a Purple Heart recipient) and the Soldiers Home chaplain in his retirement. Rev. Stearns was an American legend as the famous “fighting chaplain” of Wisconsin National Guard’s 32nd Red Arrow Division in W. W. I.
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Chapel Restoration
Chapel Restoration Plans
As the Soldiers Home Foundation Inc. works with the federal VA’s office of acquisition and materiel management in Washington, D.C. to obtain ownership control of the Chapel through a long-term lease, a Letter of Intent for which was issued in July 2008, the Foundation has moved ahead, with VA approval, with restoration planning and with some preparation for Phase I of the restoration plan in order to stave off further damage to the Chapel structure.
In 2002, fundraising for the Chapel Restoration began. In July of 2005, the Foundation launched a two-speared Save the Chapel campaign to (1) obtain ownership through a long-term lease from the federal VA and (2) raise an estimated $6.5 million needed to restore this sacred site and reopen it for veteran and community use.
RESTORATION TIMETABLE
Once the lease, currently being negotiated, in finalized, the Soldiers Home Foundation’s Chapel project will be completed in 4 basic phases. The project will restore the National Register of Historic Places historic district Chapel to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Standards, within the Chapel's National Park Service-determined period of significance 1889-1914.
Phase I: Historic Structures Report, Architect Plan, Abatement of lead and asbestos and preparation of building exterior and grounds for construction. Note: The historic structures report, the architect plan for Phase I and II, the abatement of lead and asbestos, and some building prep have been completed! See what other work has been done!
Phase II: Restored bell tower, completed by Dec. 1, 2010. New, restored wood shingle roof and tower roof as well as tower restoration completed by May 31, 2011 so that the Chapel will be open for Reclaiming Our Heritage 2011.
Phase III: Exterior work, including complete handicap accessibility, by Dec. 31, 2011.
Phase IV: Interior work, including complete interior restoration and historical displays completed and Chapel bell and organ reinstalled so Chapel is open and a part-time program assistant in place by June 1, 2011. The Chapel will be fully functional by Dec. 31, 2012.
