Danforth Chapels

The Danforth Chapel Program was funded by the Danforth Foundation, an organization created in 1927 by William H. Danforth, founder of the Ralston Purina Company, and his wife. The Danforth Foundation focused on national education philanthropy: providing scholarships to college students, supporting projects to revitalize the city of St. Louis, and funding the Danforth Chapels. (The Danforth Foundation closed in 2011 with a gift of $70M to the Donald Danforth Plant Center, a research center that focuses on solving world hunger.)

The Danforth Chapel Program supported the establishment of 24 chapels: 15 chapels on college and university campuses and nine other chapels. The chapels and the chapel program emphasized Christian faith in chapel designs but designs and chapels did accommodate for other faiths.

The foundation's first requirement was that each chapel include religious (predominantly Christian) images, such as Heinrich Hoffman's Christ in the Garden. The second requirement was that each include a plaque with an inscription:

Dedicated to the worship of God with the prayer that here in the communion with the highest those who enter may acquire the spiritual power to aspire nobly, adventure daringly, serve humbly.

The third requirement was that the Danforths have a say in the design of each chapel. Most of the Christian iconography in the chapels has been removed to ensure that the spaces are not religiously specific and to welcome groups of other faiths to use the chapel spaces.

Each chapel has its own architect, history, location, and story. Three chapels (at North Carolina State University, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, and Wartburg College) have been demolished to make room for other building.

William Danforth's vision statement—"Aspire Nobly • Adventure Daringly • Serve Humbly"—is engraved on a plaque in each of the Danforth Chapels.

An article from the dedication of the Danforth Chapel at the University of Chattanooga states that a chapel was being built in South America, but the Danforth archives reflect chapels in the U.S. with one in Japan and one in India. (Lists of the chapel locations are incomplete; research also reflects a Danforth Chapel at Southern Mississippi University, but sources of information are limited.) Several sources state that the Danforth Foundation funded 24 chapels.

Each of the 24 chapels are introduced below.

William Danforth was one of four progressive leaders who founded the American Youth Foundation and established the first of its two camps—Camp Miniwanca—in Shelby, Michigan. (Danforth's influence is evident in the American Youth Foundation's logo, similar to that of the Ralston Purina Corporation, and the vision statement—"Aspire Nobly • Adventure Daringly • Serve Humbly"—is iterated in the Miniwanca archives of the original founders' newsletters to campers, The Founders-Four Folder.) These founders focused on a Christian perspective but the youth foundation has shifted to accept a variety of faiths.

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