Middlebury looked much different in 1836 as students walked the campus area. The nearby town was still a fledgling, the hill at the top of what is now College Street lacked campus buildings, and only a handful of students were evident, many of them walking into, or out of, the newly completed chapel.
While today Old Chapel is home to the most important administrative work, including the offices of the president and a number of senior administrators, when it opened in 1836 it was the center of student life. Packed within its walls were the campus library, a mineralogy museum, classrooms, lecture halls, offices, and a two-story-high chapel.
The building became Old Chapel when Mead Chapel opened in 1916, but you can see its image mirrored across the campus, including outside Bi Hall. “If you stand back from Bi Hall with the observatory centered above it, it has the same proportions and profile as Old Chapel,” says Glenn Andres, professor emeritus of the history of art and architecture.
The similarity is made only more appropriate by the fact that Old Chapel’s cupola was the College’s first observatory.
9 Old Chapel Rd.
Middlebury, VT 05753