The Saint Ann Choir
St. Ann Chapel was built in 1951 by Clare Boothe Luce, wife of Time founder Henry Luce. Clare Luce was a woman ahead of her time, and a force of nature. She’d been an editor at Vanity Fair before writing the hit play The Women (1936) and a best-selling nonfiction book about pre-World War II Europe, Europe in the Spring (1940). She served as a war correspondent for Life in the early days of World War II, then, in 1943, was elected to the U. S. House of Representatives – Connecticut’s first female Congresswoman – where she served until 1947. She was ambassador to Italy under President Eisenhower from 1953 to 1956, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Reagan in 1983.
Clare Boothe Luce had a daughter by her first marriage, Ann Clare Brokaw. (Incidentally, Ann was the sorority little sister of Nancy Morse, the wife of our Archbishop, the Most Rev. Robert S. Morse). Tragically, Ann, while a student at Stanford, was killed in an automobile accident, in January 1944. The loss was devastating to Luce, and it played a significant role in her her conversion to Roman Catholicism. In memory of her daughter, Luce built St. Ann Chapel. St. Ann is the mother of the Virgin Mary. Above the entrance to the chapel is an impressive statue (sculptor unknown) of St. Ann revealing to a young Virgin Mary her divine calling. The statue evokes the closeness of the relationship between Clare and Ann at the time of Ann’s death.
At the time it was built, St. Ann Chapel was attached to the home to its left, first the Norris House, then the Newman Center for Stanford. Luce hired San Francisco architect Vincent Raney, who designed a womb-like structure whose walls end in a subtle curvature behind the altar. The result: incredible acoustics. A speaker facing the wall behind the altar, and talking in a normal voice, can be heard distinctly in the back pew. A few trained voices singing from the choir loft in the rear of the church creates a symphony throughout.
The Chapel is also an art museum. Luce told Raney that she hoped to make St. Ann "as much of a gem in a small way as is Father Couturier’s in France," referring to the French revival of religious art then underway. She envisioned a chapel modeled on Notre Dame at Assy, where Dominican priest Pierre Marie-Alain Couturier had commissioned fifteen modernists to make murals, tapestries, mosaics, and stained glass. She succeeded. St. Ann Chapel is a treasure of postwar art.
Luce brought the noted French painter Andre Girard from France to create life-size stations of the cross and to paint the glass windows: "paintings on light," he called it. The windows depict scenes from the Gospels and of the life of the Church. Each window panel is dominated by a different color – red, blue, green, or yellow – in such vividness and power that philosopher and author Jaques Maritain described Girard’s work as "genuine religious inspiration and genuine artistic mastery."
Embedded in the wall opposite the windows are five rows of small glass blocks – yellow, red, and blue – in a seemingly random pattern. When lit by the sun, however, one can see that the blocks form five different crosses, reflecting the five wounds of Christ. On a winter’s afternoon, the light from these blocks bathes the opposite wall in pinkish-orange light and gives a particular nuance to the painted windows.
Louisa Jenkins of Big Sur, a friend of Clare Luce, created the icon of the Virgin Mary. It is a mosaic of turquoise, lapis, shells, glass, gold leaf, stone, and ceramic. Jenkins also made the mosaic baldachin, featuring angels with Pacassoesque faces, which hangs above the altar. Victor Rier executed the sterling silver candle-holders; Louis Feron (New York, Paris) designed the magnificent silver Crucifix. Janet de Crox of New York was the sculptor who created the symbolic Tree of Life which adorns the teak doors leading to the chapel.
In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, use of the Chapel dwindled. The Newman Center was moved to Stanford University. With decreased use came neglect and deterioration. In 1998 the Diocese of San Jose sold the St. Ann property. The Newman Center was sold off separately and is now a private residence. The Chapel itself, and its 1500 square foot back yard, was acquired by the Henry Luce Foundation. In April 2003, under the direction of Hank Luce, the Luce Foundation sold the Chapel property to the Anglican Province of Christ the King. The historic revival of St. Ann Chapel began.
Restoration and Revival
The Province restored the sanctuary to the configuration set out by Clare Luce and Raney. It cleaned the Chapel from top to bottom, repainted the walls, re-stained the pews, replaced the carpet, installed a new lighting and a heating system, and created a small office space. Outside, dead trees were removed, as was the ivy which had overgrown the yard and walls. A garden was planted in the back and along the side – Camellias, lavender, pear trees, Japanese Maple. The yard was expanded and re-sodded, and a new sprinkler system added. The walls (severely cracked) were repaired and re-plastered. In the front, the antique olive trees were trimmed and shaped, the large flower pots replanted.
The transformation has been astounding. In April 2005 the Palo Alto Weekly ran a front-page story on the rebirth of St. Ann Chapel. The St. Ann Chapel Choir, a five-voice ensemble all professionally trained and of the highest caliber, fills the assembly and sends the spirit soaring. It is as if the acoustics were made for their voices. With the beautiful and moving Anglican liturgy, sublime artistic setting, and divine music, St. Ann Chapel is once again a holy place of worship and a fitting memorial to Ann Clare Brokaw.