What is a Medieval French Chapel Doing in Milwaukee?

Dozens of impossible, small-world connections brought the St. Joan of Arc Chapel to Marquette University—its backstory is just as winding, architecturally magnificent and kind of feminist.

by

Milwaukee History

An alleged Al Capone speakeasy. The grave of the inventor of the typewriter. The oldest certified 10-pin bowling alley in the United States. Are any of the historic oddities that Milwaukee has collected as odd as the genuine 15th century French chapel tucked away on Marquette’s campus?

Architecturally, the gothic St. Joan of Arc Chapel seems immediately out of place, nesting demurely between more contemporary construction on the Jesuit campus. However, since its arrival to Marquette in the 1960s it has quietly blended into school culture, serving as a site of religious respite, historic inquiry and cultural wayfinding.

The chapel was purchased by Great Northern Railway heiress Gertrude Hill Gavin, reconstructed on her Long Island estate in the 1920s then later sold to the Rojtmans, a family of tractor magnates. The estate was severely damaged by fire mere days before the Rojtmans were to move in, leaving scarcely anything but the chapel unharmed. Marc B Rojtman donated the chapel to Marquette, where it was moved and reconstructed once more in 1964.

The tale of the “walking chapel” has been told for generations in its home of Chasse-sur-Rhône, France, a small town about 30 minutes south of Lyon on the Rhône River. “It’s a story that all of us know,” says village cultural director, Damien Gomez. A century since the chapel’s departure from Europe, residents of Chasse-sur-Rhône seek to reconnect with the only heritage site from within their village bounds. A cultural history project launched by the French hamlet brought a group of 12 students and a handful of city officials, historians and educators to the U.S. last autumn. Their voyage traced the path of the chapel from New York to Minneapolis and Milwaukee and will culminate in the release of a documentary regaling their findings.

A recent WUWM Bubbler Talk addresses the niche in the chapel’s wall purported to have been wept, kissed and prayed upon by Joan, rumored to always be a few degrees cooler than the surrounding stone. “It was from a Marian Grotto—an outdoor shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Legend has it that Joan stopped to pray there during her travels ... the claim can be made that Joan prayed here.”

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There is some mystery around Joan’s patronage of the chapel. Some claim she truly visited the chapel in Chasse-sur-Rhône in 1429. Others bank on the Marian grotto—she may not have prayed in the chapel, but she did pray upon the stone.

Others, such as Gomez, are not convinced of any version of the legend. “We are much too far south, and she was doing business in Paris.”

Lingering Questions

Multiple articles purport that the front facade of Gertrude Hill Gavin’s French chateau is housed in The Met’s Cloisters Collection. The Cloisters Collection itself was initially designed by architect John Russell Pope: the very same who reconstructed the St. Joan of Arc Chapel on Gertrude Hill Gavin’s estate.

How and why does a person move European antiquities, up to and including entire buildings, to their personal estates? A fair question to ask, though this practice was at one time not so uncommon. The team from Chasse-sur-Rhône shared this bewilderment, thinking maybe the story had been exaggerated over time, but discovering the chapel had indeed been moved not once but twice spurred them to plan a trip to the U.S.

Marquette’s webpage for the chapel reports (with great comedic timing) that shortly after Gavin had purchased both the chateau and the chapel, “France enacted a law banning the export of such treasures.” Other examples of transatlantic reconstruction include the original London Bridge in Arizona and Agecroft Hall in Virginia. Some view these as opportunistic purchases of European architecture, bought up by aristocrats at a low-low price just because they can. Others see these feats of architectural logistics as adoptions of “orphaned” relics. In any case, curiosities like the chapel and its architectural cousins have now turned into unique opportunities for historic preservation and education.

Why was Gertrude Hill Gavin so fascinated with French culture and Joan of Arc?

This has less to do with Gertrude being a Francophile and more to do with her apparent interest in uplifting women’s legacies, not least of which her mother’s. While her father James J. Hill was not a practicing Catholic, Gertrude’s mother Mary Theresa Mehegan was born to Irish-Catholic immigrants, whose faith was surely an important part of everyday life. Milwaukee was also a continuous fixture for the Minnesotan family. After becoming engaged to James, Mary Theresa studied at St. Mary’s Institute in Milwaukee on the Lower East Side, where many daughters of upper-class Midwestern families were enrolled. She would have experienced a rapidly urbanizing Milwaukee in the 1860s, just as she noticed the same trend in St. Paul.

Legacy Carried On

Gertrude and Mary Theresa had a close mother-daughter relationship as evidenced by Mary Theresa’s diaries, frequently celebrating holidays and birthdays with luncheons together. It’s very likely that her mother’s faith and lived experience had a significant influence on her, seeing as Gertrude devoted most of her life to Catholic leadership. Perhaps she considered her work to be carrying on the legacy of her mother, continuing the service and philanthropy modeled by her.

One potential read on Gertrude’s actions is that she appears to have held female-empowerment beliefs and values. She was well-educated, well-traveled, and “a sportswoman,” seemingly far more interested in the social and business aspects of her loving marriage to Michael Gavin, seeing as the two had no children—a rarity in such marriages at the time. Her leadership in the National Council of Catholic Women coincided with the fight for women’s suffrage, for which she was a proponent during a time when much of the Catholic church opposed it. According to one report, Gertrude left a League of Women Voters Conference in 1922 after speakers suggested “Catholics were ardent opponents of suffrage for women, and ... referred to the United States as a Protestant country.”

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It comes as no surprise, then, that she was a devotee of St. Joan of Arc, considered by many to be a proto-feminist. It is important to note that this is a contemporary interpretation of historic events, and to impose a 21st century label of “feminist” on Gavin would be historically inaccurate.

St. Joan of Arc Chapel in 2026

Today, the chapel is a patchwork of culture and geography, from the Wisconsin oak used to lengthen the rafters in the nave to the Celtic altar stone—itself even older than the chapel. Father Nate Romano, assistant director of liturgical programs at Marquette, is warmed by the “humanness” of the chapel, connecting generations of Marquette students to one another, not to mention medieval churchgoers on the other side of the Atlantic.

Romano, a former Marquette student himself, recalls attending Mass at the chapel during his college days. His first visit to the chapel was for the still popular 10 p.m. service at a dormmate's behest. He fondly remembers Rev. John Naus, known by many as Tumbleweed the Clown. As a homesick student from California, Romano recalls “[Naus] made a very welcoming and friendly home for students.”

In a chapel that blends so many different worlds together, Romano intends to carry that legacy forward. He embraces the idiosyncrasies of the chapel: where the stones don’t quite line up or are installed backwards (evidenced by the visible marks numbering the stones for their reconstruction), where graffiti was idly etched into the walls by a wandering mind in the 1400s.

As for the team from Chasse-sur-Rhône led by Gomez, Galileo Monnet-Martin and Gaelle Egidio, they are reflecting on their journey and excitedly producing the documentary. Monnet-Martin expresses that getting the project off the ground and inspiring young people to do historic research was a challenge. They had hoped for a group of 30-40 student researchers, and planned to take a small contingent to the U.S. When only 12 joined their crew across five different Chasse-sur-Rhône schools, they decided to take the whole group after students fundraised across their village.

Now, despite a bit of good-hearted teasing from their classmates for their newfound nerdiness, the kids are inspired to learn more about their history. “When you understand the past, you better understand the present, and from there you can create a future,” Monnet-Martin remarks.

He expresses that the trip “matched reality with their fantasy,” seeming to clear up a lot of misconceptions for the students about American culture, as many of them grew up with American media. There was a tonal disconnect, he remarked, when visiting notoriously wealthy Long Island, but when visiting Milwaukee, they “felt right at home.”

For many, their favorite part of the trip was taking the train from Minneapolis to Milwaukee, using the route that Gertrude Hill Gavin’s father first established: The Empire Builder. Once reaching the chapel, the group felt a sense of profound accomplishment and joy. “I felt so moved, so affected when I entered the chapel,” said Gomez. “There are no words.”

While of course the team hopes their connection with the chapel leads to future exchange between Milwaukee and Chasse-sur-Rhône by way of scholarship and culture, they implore Milwaukeeans to take as much pride in the chapel as their village does. “It’s my impression that the story is not known by Milwaukee. We would like all the people to know, as it’s our shared story.”

The documentary will be released in September with a viewing party during European Heritage Days, a weekend celebrated across multiple European countries in which museum entries are reduced cost or free and many privately-owned heritage sites usually not open to the public accept visitors.

“Our city’s only piece of heritage is no longer here, and it’s never coming back. But with this film, we can still make the population proud of our heritage. Cultural history is a common good.”

Promo materials for the documentary can be found HERE. A sister event for the viewing party at Marquette and the French Alliance in Milwaukee is TBD.

Further Reading: The Timeline

  • The chapel was built in the first half of the 15th century in Chasse-sur-Rhône, likely by a land-owning family rather than the Church. It probably afforded farmland and livestock to young men of the family. It served a small and likely close-knit group of rural worshippers for several centuries in the South of France. It also held the tomb of Chevalier de Sautereau, a French knight from Chasse-sur-Rhône who died in battle in the 1400s. His family’s coat of arms remains painted on the chapel walls. His remains did not accompany the chapel when moved, though the lid of the tomb is still built into the floor, on the southwest corner. Much of the knight’s history is a mystery, as academics have struggled to decipher the writing on the tomb.
  • Joan of Arc is burned at the stake for heresy in 1430.
  • Between the 18th-19th century, the chapel falls into disrepair; some cite the French Revolution, others blame a regional lord with refusing to fund the small church any longer. James J Hill, an entrepreneur from St. Paul, Minn. amasses a fortune through establishing the Great Northern Railway between 1880-1893. Once complete, the “Empire Builder” passenger train (still in service today through Amtrak) carries Midwesterners to the Pacific Northwest.
  • Over the course of 20 years, Hill and his wife Mary Theresa have 10 children, including Gertrude Hill.
  • St. Joan of Arc is canonized in May of 1920.
  • Gertrude Hill Gavin becomes the first president of the National Council of Catholic Women.
  • French Architect Jacques Couelle (known for his later Modernist work) discovers and is fascinated by the chapel in Chasse-sur-Rhône. Severely dilapidated and no longer in use, the village sells it to Couelle.
  • Gavin, a devotee of St. Joan of Arc, purchases the chapel from Couelle in 1926.
  • Pope Pius XI grants written permission to hold mass in the chapel in 1933.
  • Gavin dies at the age of 77 in 1961. Prior to her death, her estate was sold to Marc Rojtman of J.I. Case, a tractor company out of Racine.
  • Rojtman donates the chapel to Marquette in 1964. He died shortly thereafter of cancer in 1967.
  • It takes nearly a year to reconstruct the chapel, beginning in 1965. The chapel’s dedication finally occurs on May 26, 1966, including a medieval revival performance by university theater students.
  • The chapel receives numerous upgrades over time, including a major restoration of the historic roof tiles, radiant floor heating system and ongoing water damage, beginning in 2020.