A birthday party of sorts is in store for Syracuse University’s Hendricks Chapel this weekend.

Alumni, staff, students and members of the Syracuse community will celebrate Hendricks’ 75th anniversary Nov. 4 through 6 with lectures, remembrances and a banquet.

Sen. Francis Hendricks, who was mayor of Syracuse from 1880 to 1881, funded the chapel’s construction. Hendricks gave the university $600,000 – an amount equivalent to about $6 million today – just before his death in 1920 at age 86.

Construction of the chapel started in January 1929 and continued through the October 1929 stock market crash and into the beginning of the Great Depression. Finishing touches were added in September 1930, and the chapel opened immediately after to the university community.

The Hendricks Chapel Choir has been a central part of Hendricks’ life since right after the chapel opened.

Members of HCC are looking forward to the rededication ceremony Sunday afternoon because they will debut an anthem composed by Craig Phillips and commissioned especially for the chapel’s anniversary, said Jessica Mischke, treasurer of HCC.

Hendricks organist Christopher Marks asked Phillips to write the anthem about a year and a half ago. Marks chose Phillips because he liked Phillips’ past work, Mischke said.

Phillips took the text inscribed on the inside of the dome of Hendricks Chapel and used it as lyrics for the song, which is titled ‘You Shall Know the Truth,’ Mischke said.

Phillips also chose chord progressions that mirror the shape of Hendricks, Mischke said.

‘The text that’s used in the song, it rotates over a lot of different chords. The chords go in a circle and that’s supposed to emulate the inside of the chapel,’ Mischke said.

Another major event taking place during the anniversary weekend is the Saturday night banquet. Hendricks’ events coordinator Ginny Yerdon said 382 people were planning on attending the event as of Wednesday afternoon.

When guests arrive at Goldstein Auditorium for the banquet, they will have the chance to answer some trivia questions about Hendricks’ history. Kelli Sattler, an intern for the Rev. Thomas Wolfe, dean of Hendricks Chapel, helped research and write the questions.

The anniversary celebration is exciting for the Hendricks community, she said.

‘People have worked really hard for this,’ Sattler said. ‘It’s going to be great to have the alumni back.’

Anniversary festivities begin Friday at 10 a.m. with a community service symposium titled, ‘The University Student: Learning and Living a Legacy of Civic Engagement.’

Four alumni speakers will participate in a panel discussion about how they reached out to the Syracuse community while at SU, Yerdon said.

Friday evening, there will be a reception, a Hendricks’ history exhibit and tours of the chapel starting at 7 p.m.

The rest of the weekend features a service project on the North Side of Syracuse at 9 a.m. on Saturday and a lecture by former SU professor Amanda Porterfield at 4 p.m., also on Saturday.

Published on November 2, 2005 at 12:00 pm