Guadalupe Seminary Chapel Rises from the Prairie

This has been a banner year for architect and professor Thomas Gordon Smith, who might rightly be called the father of the Catholic architectural revival. Not only has he seen work commence on the great church of Clear Creek Abbey in Oklahoma, but I also read that final phase of his work at the FSSP's seminary in Lincoln, Nebraska, is well under way. I visited the site back in May and foundations were clearly in evidence. The to-be-built design is largely the same as planned, though it appears a small, but handsome, bell-cote or bell-wall is substituting for the large Romanesque campanile. While it is unfortunate that costs had to be cut somewhere, I am nonetheless pleased to see that the substitution has been handled quite elegantly. Such an element might be used in a smaller, money-conscious parish church design with equally successful results.