Chapel of the Holy Cross: A Church Built into the Rocks
Near Sedona, Arizona
Rising straight out of a red rock spur just south of town is one of the most striking churches in America, the Chapel of the Holy Cross. Its creator was Marguerite Brunswig Staude, a sculptor and rancher who had inherited a drug company fortune. In nineteen thirty-two, gazing up at the newly finished Empire State Building, she had a vision of a church shaped by that same modern spirit.
Her first plan was grand and far away, a great cathedral in Budapest, designed with the help of Lloyd Wright, son of Frank Lloyd Wright. The Second World War ended those plans. Years later she turned instead to the Arizona rocks she loved, and with the help of Senator Barry Goldwater she secured permission to build on national forest land.
The architects Anshen and Allen carried out the design, and workers carved into the living cliff, removing tons of stone without dynamite. The chapel was completed in nineteen fifty-six, its ninety foot cross both its symbol and its structural spine, holding the glass walls in place. It cost about three hundred thousand dollars, won a national architecture award, and today draws large crowds of visitors every year.
