The Log Chapel

Today the University of Notre Dame campus covers 1,250 acres, and nearly 150 impressive buildings rise above the land.

At one time, though, there was only one, a humble log chapel that stood just one-and-a-half stories high, and measured just 20 feet in width by 40 feet in length.

The Log Chapel likely might have earned its way into the pages of history for either one of two reasons. The first is that it was built by the first Roman Catholic priest ordained in America. The second is that it would become the first building of the University of Notre Dame.

The priest who built the chapel, Father Stephen Badin, was ordained to the priesthood in Baltimore, Maryland, by Bishop John Carroll (himself the first Roman Catholic bishop and archbishop in the United States) on May 25, 1793. Badin would spend most of his priestly career as a missionary, ministering to widely dispersed Catholics in what became the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Illinois. He built the Log Chapel in 1831 when he established his frontier mission in northern Indiana, and named it Ste.-Marie-des-Lacs, or Saint Mary of the Lakes.

When Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., arrived at the same site in November 1842 and founded the University of Notre Dame du Lac, Father Badin’s chapel became the University’s first building.

The Log Chapel that stands at Notre Dame today is a replica, built very close to the site where the original chapel had once stood for a quarter of a century. It is so authentic that many believe it is the original chapel, however, the truth is the original chapel was destroyed by fire in 1856. The present Log Chapel was built fifty years later, in 1906. The plans for the replica were based on the memories of elderly Holy Cross brothers who had actually lived or worshipped in the original. It was constructed by William Arnett of Kentucky, a former slave who knew how to hand hew logs with a broadax.