This year marks the 60-year anniversary of Robert Carr Chapel’s first wedding.
The chapel will close this winter for some much needed updates. For more than 60 years the chapel has been without a fire sprinkler system.
Robert G. Carr wholly funded the building, which was erected in 1953 and completed the following year. Carr’s wife and then-TCU President McGruder Sadler’s wife traveled to about 13 churches on the east coast of the U.S. and studied their interior designs, bringing back many small pieces that now make up the eclectic look inside the chapel.
The pulpit is modeled after the ones in King’s Church of Boston and Christ Church in Cambridge. The brass chandeliers were influenced by St. Michael’s Church in Charleston, S.C. The windows and wall features take after Mount Vernon.
The chapel is also home to an electronic carillon that plays the TCU alma mater each hour during the day.
Robert Carr Chapel’s Event Coordinator Kayli Burnett said, “the chapel is so beautiful just by itself, you almost don’t even need to decorate it [for weddings].”
Burnett started as an intern for the chapel in 2011 while attending TCU as an undergraduate.
“Weddings are definitely our most common event,” she said, “and purple is the most common color.”
All those historic items, influences and memories have been at risk of catching fire in a largely wooden atmosphere. That is until now.
The chapel will close this winter and reopen in April when wedding season begins.