Stand under one of the world's largest horizontal stained-glass ceilings
73 panels spiralling to a point of light
A small windowless white spiral half-sunk below street level in the middle of downtown, whose ceiling is a single spiralling stained-glass work you look up into.
Why it's unique
The Chapel of Thanksgiving is a white spiral by Philip Johnson, finished in 1976, and its entire ceiling is Gabriel Loire's Glory Window: 73 panels of faceted coloured glass set in resin, wound in a spiral sixty feet overhead. It is one of the largest horizontally mounted stained-glass works in the world.
Stained glass is almost always vertical, lit from the side, and read as a picture. This is overhead and read by walking under it, and the colour sequence is deliberate — dark at the outer edge, running to white at the centre of the spiral.
Before you go
Look up as soon as you are through the door, then keep walking the spiral rather than standing still. The colours are sequenced from dark at the outside to white at the centre, so the ceiling changes continuously as you circle beneath it, and standing in one place gets you a fraction of it.
The whole visit is about ten minutes. Opening hours are limited and it closes earlier than you would expect for a downtown site. The square itself sits below street level and is easy to walk straight past at pavement height.