Princeton University Chapel

Vast 1928 Gothic chapel, third-largest university chapel in the world

The Princeton University Chapel is one of the largest college chapels in the world — a vast Gothic Revival hall completed in 1928 by Ralph Adams Cram, the same architect responsible for much of the campus's older quadrangles. The exterior is sandstone; the interior is dark oak, stained glass, and a ceiling that lifts the eye sixty feet up. The pulpit was carved from wood salvaged from a sixteenth-century French church.

Open daily; non-denominational services and concerts run year-round. Look for the bulldog gargoyle on a downpipe at the back of the building — a celebrated piece of stonemasons' humour that may or may not be a quiet jab at Yale.

things to do sight architecture
A story
A small carved bulldog hides high on a drainpipe at the rear of the chapel — a piece of architectural mischief by the stonemasons, widely interpreted as a sly tribute to rival Yale, whose mascot the bulldog is. It is roughly twenty feet off the ground and easy to miss unless you know where to look.