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Education

$20M chapel takes shape. Thomas Aquinas builds a masterpiece

Barbara Pearson
Staff Writer
Pacific Coast Business Times
1/19/07

In its quest to complete the master plan that has been in place since Thomas Aquinas College moved to its current 131-acre campus in Santa Paula in 1978, the Catholic college is now working on what it considers perhaps the most important building of all.

The Chapel of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity is currently under construction, with a price tag of more than $20 million.

“We wanted to do something really grand and that costs a lot,” said Thomas Dillon, president of Thomas Aquinas College.

“I want the chapel to have four distinguishing marks,” Dillon said. “Beauty, grandeur, permanence and tradition.”

Despite the grandeur that the chapel strives for, Dillon said he still had to restrict the design to stay within a budget that the school could afford. He noted that the rising cost of concrete and steel in the last two years also had an effect on his plans. Dillon chose to focus on permanent features of the structure than could not be changed later.

Design features such as a 135-foot bell tower were used to make the nearly 15,000-square-foot chapel stand out against its surrounding buildings, of which only the campus library matches in footprint.

Dillon said that although the library was built first, it was designed in preparation for the coming chapel.

“When we designed the library, we stepped the façade back so that when we built the chapel, it would be more prominent,” he said.

Duncan Stroik, a professor of architecture at the University of Notre Dame and a principal of Duncan G. Stroik Architect, a firm specializing in ecclesiastical design, was chosen as the architect for the chapel. HMH General Contractors was chosen as the contractor for the chapel, as well as for most of the buildings on campus.

Imported Italian marble, columns with Corinthian capitals, an 89-foot cupola, a vaulted ceiling, a baldachino—or canopy over the altar—and detail on the front façade are all distinguishing features that help to give prominence to the chapel.

While the chapel’s design has a foundation in Spanish-style architecture, Dillon said it also implements elements of Roman architecture to “elevate” the building to “follow the tradition of great Catholic architecture.”

In preparation for the chapel’s design, Dillon took a seminar on sacred architecture in which he visited churches in Rome and Florence, and has also visited famous many Spanish missions, universities in the United States, basilicas in St. Louis, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., Saint Patrick’s in New York, as well as churches in Tuscany and Spain.

Dillon said as he got a sense of the breadth of possibilities for design, he found he liked the “simplicity and elegance” of the Romanesque style.

Dillon also takes pride in the fact that plans for the chapel have been blessed by both Pope John Paul II as well as the current Pope Benedict XVI.

Thus far, the school has raised about $14 million towards building the chapel, including a lead gift of $10 million from the Dan Murphy Foundation.

“Now comes the hard part,” Dillon said, in raising the remainder. “The next step will be more difficult but well worth the effort.”

The college is making fundraising efforts with both foundations and individuals, and has small events scheduled throughout California and the country.

Also currently under construction on campus is a roughly $7 million faculty center. Once the two structures are complete, the school will have three buildings left to build of the 15 buildings on the master plan. The chapel’s expected completion date is November 2008.

The remaining buildings include an acoustically-designed auditorium for lectures and concerts at a cost of $4.9 million, a classroom building for $2.1 million and a gymnasium/athletic complex for $5.7 million.

Thomas Aquinas College was founded in 1971 and now has 20 professed nuns, 45 ordained priests and 40 seminarians among its alumni, though the college is not a seminary. The college, which is led by 37 faculty members, currently enrolls 351 students from 42 states and around the world. Through 2002, 45 percent of the students had moved on to graduate or professional school.