"The Ann Pfeiffer Chapel was the first building to be constructed on the campus. Beautifully placed on a slightly rising slope in a tropical garden-like environment, it is ideally a building for the meditative spirit. No view extends to the outside, except from balconies that project from the second level. The concrete block walls are perforated by abstract designs within which are set colored glass, admitting light in subtle tones through the walls of the ground floor of the interior. Above this lower level in subdued light, the eye is drawn to the glowing lantern tower directly overhead, rising above the congregation to bring in daylight in light-pattern. Thus, the interior, quiet and conducive to contemplation at ground level, is lofty and illuminated above; and multiple angles and forms compose the whole. Where one looks up into the lantern tower, expecting to find weight and support, the soft light filters in through translucent skylights enhanced by flowers and vines planted in great angular bowls suspended within the tower. All emphasis is directed toward the sky, the source of ever-changing light and shadow."

— Yukio Futagawa, ed. and photographs with Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, text. Global Architecture: Frank Lloyd Wright: Pfeiffer Chapel, Florida Southern College Lakeland, Florida. 1938. Beth Sholom Synagogue Elkins Park, Pennsylvania. 1954. p3.

The Creator's Words

"Anyone anything of an architect will never be content to design a building merely (or chiefly) for the picture it makes—any more than a man would buy a horse merely by its color. What kind of intellect must the critic have who seeing a building judges it by 'the look of it,' ignorant of the nature of its construction?

"For the first time in 500 years a sense of architectural form appears as a new spiritual integrity.

"Heavy walls, senseless overheads and overloads of every sort, vanish—let us be glad. Light and thin walls may now depend from cantilever slabs supported from the interior on shallow, dry-wall footings, walls themselves becoming slender screens, entirely independent of use as support. Centralized supports may stand isolated, balancing load against load—seen not as walls at all, but as integral pattern; walls may be slender suspension from point to point, in fascinating pendant forms. In general, structure now becomes an affair from the inside outward instead of from the outside inward. Various geometrical forms (circular especially) in planning structure become more economical than the square of the box. Building loads may be suspended, suspension supported by slender, isolated uprights....Enclosures extremely light in weight combined with such structural elements relieve all modern building of surplus static; structure no longer an obesity or likely to fall of its own weight....Buildings, at long last—like their occupants—may be themselves free and wear the shining countenance of principle and directly say honestly, by free expression, yet becomingly, what they really are, what they really mean. The new sense of interior space as reality may characterize modern building. Style will be the consequence of integral character. Intellect thus reinforces and makes Spirit effective. An art as flexible, as various, as infinite in its possibilities as the spirit of man."

— Edgar Kaufmann and Ben Raeb, Ed. Frank Lloyd Wright: Writings and Buildings. p316.

Details

Florida Southern CollegeSouth Johnson Avenue at Lake Hollingsworth Drive 33802