Lee Chapel

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Lee Chapel, Washington and Lee University
Lee Chapel.jpg
Lee Chapel
Lee Chapel is located in Virginia
Lee Chapel
Lee Chapel is located in the United States
Lee Chapel
LocationWashington and Lee University campus, Lexington, Virginia
Coordinates37°47′14″N 79°26′32″W / 37.78722°N 79.44222°W / 37.78722; -79.44222Coordinates: 37°47′14″N 79°26′32″W / 37.78722°N 79.44222°W / 37.78722; -79.44222
Built1867
Architectural styleLate Victorian
Part ofWashington and Lee University Historic District (ID71001047)
NRHP reference No.66000914
VLR No.117-0019
Significant dates
Added to NRHPOctober 15, 1966[2]
Designated NHLDecember 19, 1960[3]
Designated NHLDCPNovember 11, 1971
Designated VLRSeptember 9, 1969[1]

Lee Chapel is a National Historic Landmark in Lexington, Virginia, on the campus of Washington and Lee University. It was constructed during 1867–68 at the request of Robert E. Lee, who was president of the school (then known as Washington College), and after whom the university is named. The Victorian brick architectural design was probably the work of his son, George Washington Custis Lee, with details contributed by Col. Thomas Williamson, an architect and professor of engineering at the neighboring Virginia Military Institute. Robert E. Lee attended church services at Grace Episcopal Church, a hundred yards south, at the edge of the college campus. (In 1903, that church was renamed R. E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church; in 2017, its governing board voted to change its name back to Grace Episcopal Church.)

"Recumbent Statue" of Robert E. Lee asleep on the battlefield, by Edward Valentine. Located in Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia, it is often mistakenly thought to be a tomb or sarcophagus, but Lee is actually buried beneath the chapel. In the summer of 2014, replica Confederate flags surrounding the statue chamber were removed after student petitions.

Lee died and was buried beneath the chapel in 1870. The centerpiece of the apse of the chapel—where an altar would be in a church—is a statue of Lee, in his uniform, asleep on the battlefield (the "Recumbent Lee"), by "racist mythology" sculptor Edward Valentine, whose statue of Lee formerly displayed as one of Virginia's representatives in National Statuary Hall was removed from the U.S. Capitol, and whose statues of Jefferson Davis were removed from Richmond, Virginia's Monument Avenue and New Orleans.[4] Washington and Lee History Professor Ted DeLaney in 2019 offered his expert opinion of the Robert E. Lee statue and its placement in the chapel: "The symbolism there is a violation of the first commandment." DeLaney was born and grew up in Lexington during Jim Crow. He worked as a custodian, then as a lab technician at W&L for twenty years before taking classes there and graduating cum laude in 1985. He received his Ph.D. from the College of William & Mary, and returned to W&L as a professor for more than a quarter-century, teaching the history of the university, leading the History Department as its first Black chair, co-founding the African American studies program, researching the history of the university's slave ownership, and leading his classes on many tours of significant Civil Rights Movement sites before his death at 77 in 2020.[5]

On the walls are two paintings: one of President George Washington by Gilbert Stuart from 1796, and another of Lee painted by J. Reid, from 1866. In 2018, these replaced a portrait of Washington by Charles Willson Peale from the Washington family collections, and another of Lee in his uniform, painted by Edward Pine, in order to reflect the time periods of the association of each university namesake with the school.[6] There is also a plaque given by the Sigma Society on one of the walls that honors two Sigma alumni from the classes of 1912 and 1915 who lost their lives in World War I.

In the basement a crypt (added after Lee's burial) contains the remains of much of Lee's direct family: Lee himself, his wife Mary Anna Custis Lee, his seven children, and his parents—Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, who had been a general during the Revolutionary War, and Anne Hill Carter Lee. Lee's favorite horse, Traveller, is buried just outside the Chapel, where many visitors traditionally leave coins, apples, and other tributes. In the basement of the Chapel is a museum that illuminates the history of the families of George Washington and Lee as well as that of the university itself. Lee's office has been meticulously preserved almost exactly as it was when he died.

The Chapel plays a role in the modern operation of Washington and Lee. It seats about 600 in its main area and in a small, three-sided balcony. First-year students have assembled there to hear the president of the University's student-run Executive Committee speak on the school's Honor System. Important school-wide lectures, concerts, and other notable activities are held there from time to time. The school's annual Convocation of Omicron Delta Kappa, or ODK, a national honor society founded at Washington and Lee on December 3, 1914, is held in the Chapel on or about Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 19, in conjunction with a Board-mandated university holiday/Lee commemoration called "Founders Day," a version of the Robert E. Lee birthday holiday still officially celebrated in a few Southern states.[7] In 2014, Confederate flags surrounding the Lee statue in the Chapel were removed after student petitions.[8] Since 2018, large doors placed before the chamber housing the statue of Lee are closed for most university events, obscuring the chamber and statue, keeping it "functionally separate from the chapel's assembly hall" at those times, with the stated intention that in doing so the chapel can be "welcoming to all members of our community."[9] This has been met with many differing ideas and opinions from various points of view.

Lee Chapel was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963, the same year novelist Ralph Ellison became the first African American to speak there.[10] There is currently no schedule of public tours.

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved 19 March 2013.
  2. ^ "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
  3. ^ "Lee Chapel, Washington and Lee University". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Archived from the original on 2007-12-29. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
  4. ^ Schneider, Gregory S. (January 2, 2021). "Richmond sculptor Edward Valentine created many of the statues that defined Lost Cause mythology. Now his family's museum is confronting the legacy". The Washington Post. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  5. ^ Covington, Abigail (November 4, 2019). "What Do We Do With Robert E. Lee?". The Delacorte Review. Retrieved March 14, 2021.
  6. ^ "Exhibitions". Washington and Lee University. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  7. ^ Dudley, Will (January 18, 2018). "2018 Founders Day Remarks". Washington and Lee University. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  8. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-10-18. Retrieved 2014-09-25.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  9. ^ Dudley, Will (August 28, 2018). "President's Response to the Report of the Commission on Institutional History and Community". Washington and Lee University. Retrieved March 13, 2021.
  10. ^ Working group on African-American History. "African Americans at Washington and Lee". Washington and Lee University. Retrieved March 13, 2021.

External links[edit]

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