Thorncrown Chapel
Paths outward
- Location
- Carroll County, United States
- Year
- 1980
- Typology
- Religious
- Materials
- Glass
- Context
- Modernism, Prairie School, Streamline Moderne, Organic Architecture
- Map
- Open location
Thorncrown Chapel was designed by E. Fay Jones and constructed in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1980. The design recalls the Prairie School of architecture popularized by Frank Lloyd Wright, with whom Jones had apprenticed. The chapel was commissioned by Jim Reed, a retired schoolteacher who envisioned a non-denominational pilgrimage chapel set apart for meditation. The design was inspired by Sainte-Chapelle, a Gothic church in Paris pierced by numerous stained glass windows. It held some of King Louis IX's medieval Christian relics, including the Crown of Thorns believed to have been worn by Christ. This relic inspired the name of the American chapel.
