Turning an Eye for Fashion on a Quiet Chapel in a Hospital

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By James Barron

Arches on one wall of the chapel are said to echo elements in the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, France. Credit Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

NEW YORK---After a stay at an Upper East Side hospital, the designer Dennis Basso decided that a nondenominational chapel there was in need of an update. Mr. Basso said in a gravelly voice that seems to know only one volume level, booming. “The carved candleholders are from Italy.” And the chapel — officially the Leland Eggleston Cofer Memorial Chapel at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan — still had that new-carpet smell, thanks to 93 square yards of the stuff, customized for the project, installed not long before. “This is God’s workroom,” he said. “You walk in here and feel like you’re in the place of the Lord, no matter who your god is.” [link]