Chapel Hall
History of the Building
Chapel Hall in the fall
Franklin is a small, beautiful village of Greek Revival, Federal, and Victorian houses, churches and stores with lovely quiet tree-lined streets. Settled in 1792, Franklin was, throughout the 19th century, the thriving commercial center of the predominantly rural, but then quite prosperous, Town of Franklin in Delaware County, New York. Chapel Hall, and its theatre, were originally part of the distinguished Delaware Literary Institute. In 1836, about 50 years after the first European settlers arrived in this area, the Institute was founded in Franklin, a tiny village on the Catskill turnpike, by local farmers and tradesmen as a private academy for their sons and daughters. Fees were adjusted to income - or free - for local students who qualified to attend the school.
During the 19th century the Institute grew in fame and prestige, attracting students not only from other states but also from abroad. A challenging curriculum emphasized the classics. Many young men and some women graduates went on to the best colleges and universities of the Northeast. By the mid-nineteenth century, the Delaware Literary Institute’s main buildings enclosed three sides of a campus whose tree lined central artery was Institute Street. Two of the original academic buildings remain: Stone Hall, built in 1836 of cut blue stone and listed individually on the National Register of Historic places since 1980, and Chapel Hall, built in 1854. A third building, Ladies' Hall, originally across the street from Chapel Hall, was torn down in 1932 to make way for a new public Franklin Central School.
Chapel Hall itself is a monumental 3 story Greek Revival building, measuring 80 feet long by 40 feet wide. Its length facing the street boasts five soaring three-story columns enclosing a 12 foot-wide portico. Originally, the large auditorium on the first floor was the chapel of the Delaware Literary Institute, hence the name Chapel Hall. On the upper floors were boys' dormitories, a library, schoolmasters' quarters, and classrooms.
