Between Elastic Modernism and Iconic Simplicity

A building is not something you finish. A building is something you start.

Stuart Brand[1]

“Long life, loose fit, low energy” is one of the more muted mantras of the sustainability movement, charged by the then president of the Royal Institute of British Architects Sir Alex Gordon.[2] It is perhaps less technologically glamorous than chilled beams or cogeneration, but the capacity of a building to adapt and respond over time can be enough to prolong its preservation, if not guarantee its future.

Two Mid-Century Modernist chapels in New Orleans, the Episcopal Chapel of the Holy Spirit and the Methodist NOLA Wesley Center, built within four blocks and ten years of each other, demonstrate what it looks like for a religious structure to stay and another to adapt. Squint, and the former is perfectly preserved, save some post-Katrina paint on the once exposed redwood ceiling. Squint again at the latter, and the central volume might convey more rave than nave. Staff at the Wesley Center sell Red Bull in the once narthex and proffer paninis across a lengthy concrete countertop. The Chapel of the Holy Spirit has steadfastly maintained its interior and only recently replaced the pews with loose wicker chairs. Wesley Center, in contrast, seems to revel in architectural elasticity, or a willingness to modify or perhaps disregard a design history in order to achieve present-day relevancy.

"Hands Folded in Prayer:" The Chapel of the Holy Spirit

Originally designed in 1956 by Claude E Hooten AIA, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit was initially named for the Rev. F.L. Hawks, a rector for Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral and the first president of the University of Louisiana, which later became Tulane University. Programmed as an institutional chapel and not a parish church, the structure largely served students. From its inception, the church was poised to hang its ethos on its aesthetic. A writer for The Times-Picayune noted in May 1956, "The chapel, resembling two hands in a finger-tip posture of prayer, is considered a striking example of modern architecture. It is 40 feet high, 20 feet wide and 50 feet long . . . Both side walls and the entire façade are of glass with redwood framing."[3] The reporter went on to note that flooring was of oak blocks on cement and the white marble altar was set against a solid blue-black brick rear.[4] While the A-frame structure might have been strikingly Modern, it accommodated the axial patterns of traditional Anglican liturgy. 

The appropriateness of Hooten’s design for the Chapel of the Holy Spirit was noted by a writer of a New Orleans States article entitled, "New Chapel Fools the Eye, Not as Tall as It Looks: High-Peaked Roof Has Purpose." In the article, Rev. Thomas Aycock Jr. asserted that the 80-seat-capacity soaring nave "gives the appearance of Gothic height and churchliness, which is usually absent in a small chapel."[5] The Chapel’s leaders leaned into the new building’s aesthetic, going so far as to add an abstract version of the building’s soaring roof to its letterhead.[6]

Once the new building opened, attendance jumped from 1,311 in 1955 to 10,207 in 1959, an almost ten-fold increase, according to the Chapel’s 1959 annual report.[7] The report attributed the increase largely to location, noting how it was only a few minutes walk from any point on the campus of Tulane University and the only religious facility nearby. Still, the annual report did attribute some credit to the building's Modern form: ‘The Chapel is the dominant feature of the Episcopal Center building . . . and the Architecture symbolizes hands folded in prayer.[8]

As a result of the extraordinary growth in attendance, in 1961 the Chapel of the Holy Spirit hired another architect, Henry G. Grimball, to design an addition that strategically expanded the building and squeezed in as much additional square footage as possible. Working with a $100,000 budget, Grimball’s design extruded Hooten’s A-frame toward the street by one lone bay and flanked either side of it with an outrigger truss system of gossamer-like wings, allowing for longer, fixed pews inside. New support spaces included a sacristy, lounge, kitchen, and renovated offices.

An Architecture of Elasticity: NOLA Wesley Campus Center

Four blocks away and around the corner from The Chapel of the Holy Spirit, there is a line to get into the Modernist chapel now known as NOLA Wesley Campus Center. Today, people recognize the Wesley Center’s building less because of traditional worship there and more because of The Labyrinth, a donation-based cafe that markets itself as “a safe, alcohol-free environment for students to relax, study, and hang out.”[9] To enter the Wesley Center’s chapel, one passes a beverage cooler and counter where staff serve hot paninis and cold peach tea. The nave is replete with sofas, stools, and four-top tables. 

There are fewer historical documents that record the history of the Wesley Center than the Chapel of the Holy Spirit, an absence that might promote aesthetic elasticity. Local Methodists acquired the site in 1963 and hired Grimball to design a Modern sanctuary.[10] Like the Chapel’s A-frame, a local reporter noted the symbolism of Grimball’s 1967 design for a concave tented roof structure placed atop a brick base. The reporter wrote, “The $65,000 investment will have a 48-foot-high steeple topped by a six-foot cross over a skylight of stained glass . . . Large laminated roof beams will form a pattern symbolic of clasped hands with fingers touching just beneath the glass section.”[11] Now working to accommodate Methodist rather than Episcopalian liturgical requirements, Grimball eschewed the more traditional axiality of high-church worship and placed worshippers on three sides of the center altar, with the fourth side reserved for the choir. It was a more flexible seating arrangement that may have made it easier to reconfigure the Wesley Center in the future and extend its vibrant longevity. Not to be outdone by their Episcopalian neighbors, the Wesley Center was $30,000 more expensive than the Chapel of the Holy Spirit with slightly more seating capacity and a peaking surpassing the Chapel’s ridge by eight feet. 

From its inception, Grimball’s design for the Wesley Center imbued the building with programmatic elasticity. Images of a student orientation that appeared in a 1968 Methodist newsletter, a year after the building’s opening, depict freshmen reclining in folding chairs arranged in the round, not a rigid pew in sight. 

Revolutions in Campus Ministry

I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.

Martin Luther, 1520[12]

As the Methodist Wesley Center was under construction to better serve students and the surrounding community, The Hullabaloo, Tulane University’s student newspaper, dug into the declining role of religion on campus. Two years before the Wesley Center’s steeple topping, a Hullabaloo article entitled “Campus Religion Turns Into Doldrums” charged, “There is a revolution in religion on campus and Tulane religious leaders are kept humming to adjust to the change.”[13] Three years later, the Wesley Center’s own chaplain, Rev. Howard Daughenbaugh, foreshadowing the future of his own ministry,” concluded, “The abiding interest today is no longer in questions of faith and order but in life and mission . . . this mission means an active involvement in social issues.”[14]

Today, the transformation of the Wesley Center makes Rev. Daughenbaugh’s predictions seem prescient. Rev. Liv Thomas, the current Co-Director and Campus Minister at the Wesley Center, cites the catalyzing vision of her predecessor, Rev. Morgan Guyton, for the creation of The Labyrinth as a refuge from campus life.[15] A 2018 Instagram post of a vacant nave documents the elasticity of Grimball’s chapel interior and a blank slate for Rev. Guyton’s ministry vision. In a 2023 Instagram post, Rev. Guyton wrote, "In fall of 2018, our campus ministry NOLA Wesley started the Labyrinth Cafe. I didn’t think it was going to survive the pandemic . . . In October 2019, the Labyrinth had 496 guests. In October 2022, they had 2,835 guests. If you would like to invest in queer-affirming, outside the box Christian campus ministry, please consider supporting NOLA Wesley."[16]

In contrast to the Wesley Center, the Chapel of the Holy Spirit is usually quiet during the week, save for a community meal on Thursday nights. Inside the building, the space leans toward an iconic simplicity of its own now that the pews have been replaced with wicker chairs and collapsible kneelers. Here too there is an architectural elasticity present. A Lutheran pastor now shepherds the chapel, leading both the students of surrounding universities and parishioners from the community in a single service on Sundays.

The Teacup and the Tea

In an interview with me, Rev. Thomas described her own notions of architectural elasticity based on her experience leading the Wesley Center. 

“In all of the other church positions I’ve held . . . I’ve always received a very intensive building orientation, because there’s . . . a high degree of preciousness. ‘This stained glass was donated by this family, and we just did a capital campaign to make this room look like this.’ I received no such orientation here, and part of that is the nature of campus ministry. There’s high turnover. It’s hard work, [and] people don’t stick in the role long, so there’s institutional knowledge that’s lost. But I also think there’s just, frankly, in a beautiful way, less preciousness about the building, and a lot more focus on function, just a lot more focus on what we can do in here, what this beautiful space can make possible.”[17]

In this reflection, Rev. Thomas inadvertently defined Modernism. And perhaps that is the role of Modernism, or good design more broadly, to rest in its iconic simplicity. At its best, it is simply beautiful. 

The chaplain for the Episcopal Chapel of the Holy Spirit is Lutheran and the chaplain for the Wesley Center, Rev. Thomas, was ordained Presbyterian. With a reverent nod to long life, loose fit, low energy, neither church deploys traditional pews and the Wesley Center now has no altar and only a small wooden podium for a pulpit. In a charge of iconic simplicity, both spaces still contain an ample cross, still hung at the terminus of the central axis. Both still hold worship services, but a more elastic version of them. And with such an alignment of both passion and plight, the two ministries have begun to collaborate. Squint, and the mission is the same.  

“I did not try to create just a physical building, but to design an environment that holds people and objects inside; I tried to create an environment rather than physical objects of architecture . . . In the Japanese tea ceremony, the tea cup for the ceremony is very simple in form and very subdued in color. But once the tea’s poured, the teacup transforms into a whole new object. So, it’s not the object alone that is important, but the total – the temperature of the tea, its color, its smell. That’s the environment. That’s what I mean, about architecture, when I say it can ‘go away.’”[18]

Citations

1. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built (Penguin Books, 1995), 327.

2. A. Gordon, “Designing for Survival: The President Introduces His Long Life/Loose Fit/Low Energy Study,” Royal Institute of British Architects Journal 79, no. 9 (1972): 374–76.

3.  “Episcopal Student Center Chapel Dedication Is Set,” Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), May 19, 1956.

4. Times-Picayune, “Episcopal Student Center Chapel Dedication Is Set.”

5. Missing Citation

6.  Letter dated September 20, 1963. 

7.  Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Annual Report (The Episcopal Church at Tulane University, 1959), Courtesy of The Chapel of the Holy Spirit.

8. Chapel of the Holy Spirit, Annual Report.

9.  The Labyrinth – NOLA Wesley, n.d., accessed October 10, 2025, https://wesley.tulane.edu/the-labyrinth/.

10.  “Methodists Buy Two Buildings,” Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), March 9, 1963.

11.  “Soaring Steeply Will Dominate Development,” Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), January 29, 1967.

12. Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate, trans. C.A. Buchheim (P.F. Collier & Son Company, 1909), https://www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/hc/address-to-the-christian-nobility/.

13.  MISSING “DOLDRUMS” CITATION

14.  “Campus Clergy Interview: Church ‘In For Hard Times’",” The Tulane Hullabaloo 62, no. 19 (1967), Tulane University.

15.  Andrew Liles, “Interview with Liv Thomas (Co-Director and Campus Minister, NOLA Wesley),” August 6, 2025.

16.  Morgan Guyton, May 13, 2023, Instagram, PROVIDE THE URL FOR THE SPECIFIC INSTAGRAM POST. 

17.  Andrew Liles, “Interview with Liv Thomas (Co-Director and Campus Minister, NOLA Wesley),” August 6, 2025.

18. Terence Riley, “Interview with Yoshio Taniguchi, Design Architect,” May 29, 2003, Video Conference, https://press.moma.org/wp-content/press-archives/PRESS_RELEASE_ARCHIVE/interview.pdf 

About the Author

A fifth-generation Mississippian, Andrew Liles, AIA, LEED AP owns his own practice in New Orleans, Louisiana and is an instructor at the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment. Liles focuses practice in the southeast with projects ranging from compact commercial to custom residential work. Liles infuses each project with regional relevance and a high degree of creativity. A LEED Accredited Professional, he is a founding board member of the Mississippi Chapter and past board member of the Louisiana Chapter of the US Green Building Council. Liles in the president-elect for the Louisiana Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He has been a project architect for both award winning and sustainable architecture.

Liles’ design prowess and technical expertise provide the opportunity to teach consistently and for over a decade at Tulane University. He has taught design studio at all core levels and has taught lecture courses in technology, sustainability, and freehand drawing and observation. An habitual sketcher and artist, Liles is currently exhibited in the Ogden Museum of Southern Art’s Louisiana Contemporary 2025, recognizing and celebrating contemporary artists from across the state.