Chapel
The international Upper Room headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee is centered around The Upper Room Chapel, which hosts thousands of visitors each year. Speakers from different denominations and countries take part in the weekly Wednesday morning worship service.
The focal point of The Upper Room Chapel is a nearly life-size woodcarving of Leonardo da Vinci's painting. The Last Supper, sculpted by Ernest Pellegrini of A. H. Davenport, Irving and Casson of Boston, MA. The woodcarving is an extraordinary work of art, created by fifty people over fourteen months' time. The carving is seventeen feet wide and eight feet high and seems to have a depth of many feet, although the greatest depth in the carving is only eight inches. The chancel of the chapel is patterned after the carving, with the ceiling, tapestries, and altar table designed to reflect the setting in Pellegrini's work.
The pulpit in the chapel, with its winding stair and canopy, has features of several significant pulpits: City Road Church in London, made famous by John Wesley; St. George's Church in Philadelphia, PA; and St. Philip's Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where Wesley preached when he was a missionary in Georgia. The front of the pulpit bears the Chi Rho, said to be the oldest monogram of Christ.
