Chapel of the Holy Cross — church building
Matthew P. Del Buono · CC BY-SA 3.0

Chapel of the Holy Cross

  • 1 min read
  • 34.832° N 111.767° W

Interesting facts

  • The 90-foot cross that forms the chapel's facade is not just a symbol: it is also part of the structure holding the building up.
  • Senator Barry Goldwater helped Staude obtain the special-use permit needed to build a church on federal land in the Coconino National Forest.
  • Builders moved more than 25 tons of rock to fit the chapel into the butte, and did it without using dynamite.
  • The walls are a single foot of reinforced coarse-aggregate concrete, set against red rock cliffs that rise about 1,500 feet behind them.
  • Despite its fame, the chapel is small: it holds about 150 people, with pew seating for only 50.
  • The crucifix inside is the work of sculptor Keith Monroe, and both ends of the nave are glazed in smoky grey glass.
  • Arizonans voted the chapel one of the Seven Man-Made Wonders of Arizona in 2007, and it joined the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.

Why it is worth it

The chapel exists because of an optical illusion on a skyscraper. In 1932, sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude was visiting the newly finished Empire State Building when, from a certain angle, the steel framework of the building seemed to resolve into an enormous cross. She decided on the spot that she wanted to build a church shaped that way, and spent the next two decades trying to make it happen.

Her first attempt wasn't in Arizona at all. Staude tried to build the cruciform church in Budapest, working with Lloyd Wright — son of Frank Lloyd Wright — but the project collapsed when the Second World War broke out. It took the death of both her parents in 1950 for the idea to resurface, this time reimagined as a memorial to them, and this time on her own family's land above Sedona's red rocks rather than in central Europe.

Once the design was settled — credited to architects Richard Hein and August K. Strotz of the firm Anshen & Allen — the actual building went up fast: eighteen months, for a total cost of $300,000, under construction supervisor Fred Coukos. The American Institute of Architects gave it an Award of Honor the following year, in 1957, an unusually quick nod for a building that had started life as a sketch inspired by a New York office tower.

Getting there

42 km from Flagstaff. Flagstaff Pulliam Airport (FLG) is about 35 km away.

Plan your visit

We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.

Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Arizona 18The Most Beautiful Places in the United States 228The Most Beautiful Churches in the United States 6The Most Beautiful Sacred Places in the United States 10The Most Beautiful Churches 186The Most Beautiful Sacred Places 623

From the encyclopaedia

The Chapel of the Holy Cross is a Roman Catholic chapel built from 1954 to 1956 into the red rock buttes of Sedona, Arizona, within the Coconino National Forest. It was inspired and commissioned by local rancher and sculptor Marguerite Brunswig Staude, and was designed by August K. Strotz of the firm of Anshen & Allen, with Richard Hein of the firm as the project architect. The chapel is under the auspices of the episcopal see of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix and its ministry is conducted by St. John Vianney Parish, Sedona.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

34.83202, -111.76676per Wikidata