AN HOTEL CHAPEL.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 49, Issue 175, 11 May 1929, Page 7

AN HOTEL CHAPEL.

PLACE FOR MEDITATION. Taking a leaf from the past, when the medieval traveller could find a chapel for meditation and prayer in a way side inn, the Hotel Biltmore in New York recently opened within its walls a similar chapel, where people of all faiths may retire for meditation. A dozen guests were present, writes Lemuel F. Parton in the "Literary Digest." Easter lilies were on the altar, and beside it were bowls of yellow roses. No bloom, he tells us, will ever be allowed to wither heire. Fresh flowers will always be found on the altar, and above it is the inscription, "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest." The doors of the chapel will never be closed. As the correspondent describes the chapel: "It is an exquisite little sanctuary, reminiscent of Sainte-Chapelle, on the Isle do Cite, Paris, a beautiful and cloistered retrcaet in a great municipal building. Or it might suggest the tiny chapels hidden away in the floral splendours of the Palazzo Barberini or the Palazzo Doria in Rome. It is without precedent in America, both in its inspiration and in its use of ecclesiastical tradition without fashioning a single definitely religious symbol. It is to he a chapel for worshippers of all faiths. "Carved pilasters speak of the choir stalls of Notre Dame. The tiled floor might have come from a Franciscan monastery. Iron grill work is Florentine, and there are bits of ornamentation' suggesting the warm splendours of the San Sulspice. Beside the altar are small stained-glass windows, with the figures of kneeling angels—drawn, however, with an emphasis of purely decorative effects, in apparent avoidance of any literal symbology. There are hints of Gothic, Romanesque, Baroque, and Byzantine, all exquisitely blended. ~ "One may step down the corridor and look out across the Grand Central station and a wilderness of skyscrapers, a jumble of architecture and a confluence of many faiths and many cultures. ' . " 'This shows why this chapel is needed,' said John MoEntee Bowman, president of the hotel corporation. 'I don't think so much of putting Bibles in the rooms —not to speak with any lack of veneration for the Bible—but I believe, rather, that a hurried, harassed and'driven person, as most of us are these days, needs a retreat like this, where he "may worship his own God in bis own way. The chapel has been planned to provide a retreat of peace and beauty for Catholic, Jewish, or Protestant worshippers—or those ot any other faiths. For this reason we have consciously and carefully avoided including the symbol of any particular faith These chapels will be placed in all the 'hotels of our system, and m any. other building which I may happen to control."