A tale of kismet and modernist matrimony In 1955, architect Eero Saarinen unveiled a small nondenominational chapel at Boston?s Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), alongside a performance space called Kresge Auditorium.
The windowless chapel embodies Saarinen?s modernist vision: A brick cylinder with a 12-foot-wide moat, it bears a resemblance to Buffalo, New York?s Kleinhans Music Hall, which Saarinen built with his father Eliel between 1938 to 1940. Though it?s more contained than the soaring, Jet Age masterpieces for which the younger Saarinen would gain recognition, it?s no less uplifting.
In February, the chapel?s moat is filled with snow and its interior is unexpectedly bright: Sunlight gleams off the drifts, through glass panels along the floor?s perimeter and the white-marble altar. Outside, a sign advertises Catholic mass, Shabbat services, and a Buddhist community meditation. Kresge Auditorium lies across the blanketed quadrangle.
Courtesy Daisy Alioto
The wedding of Piet Bos and Mary Lynn Smoot, captured by a photographer from The Cleveland Press. Bos and Smoot were the first couple to be married at Saarinen?s chapel.

Late last year, indulging an obsession with trawling eBay for interesting architectural photography, I came across a wedding photo that stopped me in my tracks.
The snapshot was of Piet Bos and Mary Lynn Smoot, the first couple married in the MIT Chapel. They were photographed at the altar, illuminated by ...