Qualla: The Navy's Tiffany Chapel

The Navy's Tiffany Chapel: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eugene Zelenko, CC BY-SA 4.0. Walk into St. Peter's Chapel on Mare Island and the first thing you notice is not the wooden pews or the cruciform floor plan. It is the light. Filtered through one of the largest collections of Tiffany stained glass windows gathered under a single roof, sunlight enters this small Shingled Gothic church in shades of cobalt, emerald, and gold. Each window memorializes a Navy life -- an admiral, a chaplain, the women of the Navy and Marine Corps. Dedicated on October 13, 1901, this is the oldest extant Naval chapel in the United States, the first interdenominational chapel in the armed services, and a building whose story is inseparable from the community it served for nearly a century on the shores of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

Image: Eugene Zelenko | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Navy's Tiffany Chapel: A Chaplain's Persistence

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiddo27, CC BY-SA 4.0. For decades, Reverend Adam A. McAlister held services in whatever room on the base could be temporarily rigged for worship -- a practice the Navy called being "rigged for church." McAlister had served as Mare Island's chaplain since 1873, and the makeshift arrangement rankled him...

Image: Kiddo27 | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Navy's Tiffany Chapel: Windows Like No Other

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiddo27, CC BY-SA 4.0. The stained glass arrived window by window over the next fifteen years, most of it donated by families of Navy personnel in memory of loved ones who had served. The Tiffany Studios pieces are the collection's crown jewels. On the right side of the sanctuary, a pastoral scene depi...

Image: Kiddo27 | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Navy's Tiffany Chapel: Where the Navy Married

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiddo27, CC BY-SA 4.0. St. Peter's Chapel was more than a place of Sunday worship. For generations of Mare Island families, it marked every passage that mattered -- baptisms, weddings, funerals. The chapel's guest books read like a social history of the Pacific Fleet. During World War II, the pace of w...

Image: Kiddo27 | CC BY-SA 4.0

The Navy's Tiffany Chapel: After the Shipyard Closed

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kiddo27, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mare Island Naval Shipyard shut down in 1996 after 142 years of continuous operation, the longest-serving naval shipyard on the Pacific Coast. The closure left St. Peter's Chapel stranded on a former military base transitioning to civilian use. But the building endures. Its cruci...

Image: Kiddo27 | CC BY-SA 4.0