Description Architect: Jens Fredrick Larson
General Contractor: Fowler-Jones Construction Co.
Assistant Designer: Lloyd Winchell Biebigheiser
Groundbreaking: October 15, 1951
Cornerstone Laid: October 1953
Seats: 2,250
Carillon: 48 bells
Organ: M.P. Möller Inc., 3,696 pipes, 62 stop controls, 22 pedal controls, a 25-horsepower motor, weighs 25 tons
President Harry Truman presided over the groundbreaking ceremony and gave a major foreign policy speech.
Named for Samuel Wait, the first President of Wake Forest University.
March 17, 1978, President Jimmy Carter made a major National Security address in Wait Chapel.
Wait Chapel hosted presidential debates in 1988 between George Bush and Michael Dukakis and in 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a practice speech for his "I Have A Dream Speech" on October 11, 1962 in Wait Chapel. The speech was recorded on reel-to-reel tapes by 88.5 WFDD-FM radio and is available online through the university's digital library.
Wait Chapel's Christmas Lovefeast is the largest Lovefeast in the world.
Larson laid out the Wake Forest University campus on grid, with a straignt line axis beginning to the north at Pilot Mountain, to represent nature and running south, through the steeple of Wait Chapel, representing God and continuing south through downtown, representing man and commerce.
The time capsule in the cornerstone contains newspapers from major cities across North Carolina, a King James Bible, brick fragments and soil from the old campus, a magnolia leaf, presidential pictures, BB's, a 1953 wheat penny and a letter from Steven Stroupe.
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