Sheil Catholic Center

When the Sheil Catholic Center celebrated its Golden Jubilee in 1989, a group of talented and dedicated associates researched and wrote a history of the first 50 years. We are reprinting that history here.

A Growing Family - Sheil Gets A New Home

The growing Catholic community on campus began to tax the facilities at 1922 Sheridan Road. Sunday Masses in the third-floor chapel became overcrowded affairs with students standing along the walls and down the front and back stairs. Additional Masses, with two of them celebrated simultaneously, one in the chapel and the other in the basement meeting room, proved inadequate. All agreed that we needed a new chapel.

Sheil alumni quickly responded to an invitation to form a building committee. Ted Van Zelst became chairman, and Bernard Lyons served as vice chairman. Both Bishop Sheil and the new Chicago archbishop, John Cardinal Cody, approved the project. The initial plan was to construct a separate chapel building, a "garden chapel" to seat 250, in Sheil's backyard. After receiving design proposals from several architects, the committee picked Oscar Kleb and Associates of Aurora. Fundraising efforts began in May of 1965 and, by the following year, had raised $27,000 from alumni and friends.

Ready to proceed with the project, the committee sought a normally routine zoning variation from the City of Evanston. To its surprise a representative of the university appeared unannounced at the city-council hearing and objected to the granting of the variation, indicating that Northwestern wanted to acquire the Sheil property for its own purposes and would consider exchanging another property for it. Subsequent negotiations proved long and arduous, but thanks to the competence and persistence of the Sheil community, a satisfactory resolution was eventually reached.

In exchange for the building and lot at 1922 Sheridan Road, Sheil received from the university a parking lot at the southwest corner of Sheridan Road and Garrett Place and the sum of $250,000. Cardinal Cody and President Miller signed the agreement on Oct. 18, 1966.

New plans were drawn up for a combined center and chapel, and the Henry Brothers construction company began work on the new site, 2110 Sheridan Road. Dedicated and sustained efforts by the building committee garnered funds from various sources, including $125,000 from Cardinal Cody's archdiocesan project renewal fund, $50,000 from alumni and friends, and an extraordinary single donation of $125,000 from Mrs. Paul V. Galvin, in memory of whose late husband the chapel would be named.

With Cardinal Cody presiding, the cornerstone for the new center was laid in a ceremony on Oct. 15, 1967. A year later, the new Sheil Center and Galvin Chapel were officially dedicated.

The heart of the new building was and is the chapel, designed to bring an expanded congregation into a more intimate sense of participation in the liturgy.

The Sehil family now had its second and larger home. The heart of the new buidling was and is its chapel, designed to bring an expanded congregation into a more intimate sense of participation in the liturgy. The altar stands at the focal point of the interior space, lit from above in daytime by a skylight dome. Its design -- a block of stone set within a wooden table -- evokes the dual nature of the Mass as sacrifice and meal, the offering and partaking of the sacramental bread and wine that are Christ's body and blood.

Surrounding the altar on three sides are the pews, arranged in a semicircle to bring the congregation as close to it as possible and set on a sloping floor to provide the best possible sightlines. Rising behind the altar is a brick reredos, kept simple in design to accentuate the centrality of the altar. On the reredos are symmetrical niches for the tabernacle and the book of scriptural readings, manifesting the presence of Christ as Bread of Life and Word of God.

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