JEOPARDY! Clues Viewers in on Duke Chapel, Campus History
Duke professor of medieval architecture explains the question.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Watch the JEOPARDY! clues involving Duke (RealPlayer)
Durham, N.C. -- On last Friday’s episode of JEOPARDY!, host Alex Trebek stumped
all three contestants with this clue: “The tower of the Duke Chapel
was inspired by the Bell Harry Tower of this English
cathedral.”
That clue, one of a series involving Duke on the show, would not have baffled Caroline Bruzelius, Duke’s Anne M. Cogan Professor of Art and Art History and an expert in medieval architecture.
“Canterbury,” she said immediately, referring to the 15th-century Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, United Kingdom. To be more specific, she added, “The crossing tower of Canterbury,” which is nicknamed “Bell Harry” and is located at the intersection of the cross-shaped building.
(Watch the JEOPARDY! clues involving Duke with RealPlayer or Quicktime.)
The limestone towers at Duke and Canterbury share a Late English Gothic style called “Perpendicular,” she explained. To enhance the sense of the tower’s reach upwards, the towers have closely spaced and delicate vertical moldings up their sides and spires at the top.
Duke Chapel and the Canterbury Cathedral are not, however, exactly alike, Bruzelius said. Their towers are at different places – the cathedral’s is at the center and the chapel’s is integrated into the entrance.
“At Duke they’ve taken this idea of a monumental tower that appears on a cathedral but used it on what one might call a parish church design -- that is, a tower above the portal,” she said.
The architecture inside the chapel was influenced more by Princeton’s chapel and general trends in American campus Gothic design than by medieval English design, she said.
However, Bruzelius said she sees a similar purpose in both towers. Canterbury Cathedral was built as “a great symbol of medieval piety” and Duke Chapel was designed as “a wonderful symbolic statement … of the importance of religion.”
