Chapel of the Holy Cross close
— a cross the rock chose to hold.
Not only on a wall.
“The cross set into the cliff above Sedona, seen from close enough to read the marks in the concrete. Marguerite Brunswig Staude pulled the shape from a drive past the Empire State Building in 1932 and waited twenty-four years to build it. The red rock takes the weight without comment. Spring keeps the wind down.
Chapel of the Holy Cross close, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Chapel of the Holy Cross sits on a 250-foot spur of red sandstone on the south edge of Sedona, Arizona, within the Coconino National Forest. Marguerite Brunswig Staude commissioned the design in the early 1930s after a drive past the new Empire State Building, and the building was finished in 1956 with architects Anshen and Allen of San Francisco. The site lies at roughly 4,500 feet between two formations locally called the Twin Buttes. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix operates the chapel.
The chapel rises directly out of Permian-age red sandstone of the Schnebly Hill Formation, the same iron-stained layer that gives every butte in Sedona its colour. Staude's design plants a ninety-foot cross between two natural rock pillars and ties the chapel walls into the spur with reinforced concrete poured against the cliff. The structure has no traditional foundation on the cross side; the sandstone is the structure. Seventy monsoon seasons of summer storms and winter freezes have left the join intact.
The chapel is reached by a half-mile spur off State Route 179, about three miles south of the Sedona Y. A ramped walkway climbs from the lower parking area. Hours are generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, with a Monday-evening prayer service at 5. Admission is free and donations support upkeep. Parking fills by mid-morning in spring and fall; the city's Sedona Shuttle covers the trailhead from town. Photography is permitted; tripods inside the chapel are not.