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I’m always fascinated by the big plans people had in the early half of the Nineteenth Century when the Midwest was opened up to settlement. The former Jubilee College, founded by Episcopal minister Philander Chase in 1839 northwest of Peoria, was to operate as a seminary for priests serving the surrounding states.
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Only a small part of the planned seminary and boys’ and girls’ school was constructed. What is standing today is basically one half of what was supposed to be a quadrangle. You can see below how the extant buildings relate to the proposed never-constructed second half.
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Where we are standing below would have been the courtyard of the complex.
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Apparently very few priests studied at the institute studied at the seminary when it opened in 1840 and it closed in 1862 when Chase died.
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Below you can see a plan of how the buildings would have expanded.
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The dormitories and classroom spaces are simple, with stone lintels and six pane over six pane glass windows.
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Around on the front is where it gets interesting with some nice Gothic windows. Unfortunately, the façade is obscured by some large pine trees.
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The chapel is perhaps the most engaging and ornate portion of the building. It was closed the day I visited.
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The building was acquired by the State of Illinois in 1933 and restored in the 1970s. The chapel has both an external and internal entrance.
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There are a couple of historic photos of the interior.
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Back to the outside, there are some engaged buttresses holding up the chapel walls. The original plan for the college would have been quite elaborate, as you can see below. The plans were obviously never realized.
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