The Varela Chapel: A Cuban Monument in St Augustine
by Elizabeth Duran Gessner
The focal point of Tolomato Cemetery is a small white building at the very back of the cemetery that attracts a steady stream of Cuban visitors, preservationists and scholars. Known as the Varela Chapel, it was built as a mausoleum for the Cuban-born philosopher, political activist and priest Félix Varela, who died in St. Augustine in 1853.
Most of Father Varela’s career was spent far from Cuba, but his reputation and works lived on in Cuban intellectual circles and among his former students at Havana’s College and Seminary of San Carlos. It was one of these students, Lorenzo de Allo, who found him, sick and dying and impoverished, in St Augustine. Allo collected money from Cuba and New York to aid him, but this help arrived three days after Varela’s death. Unable to help him in life, the Cubans decided to honor him in death.
A member of the Cuban group sketched the design for the little Neoclassical chapel, bought land at the back of the cemetery in order not to disturb earlier burials, and found a local builder. The chapel was built of coquina, a coarse shell conglomerate.
The cornerstone was laid in March of 1853, with dedication addresses given in Spanish and English by a Cuban delegate, José Casal, and representatives of the bishops of Savannah and New York. Upon completion of the building in 1855, Father Varela’s remains were moved to the crypt in the chapel.
The Cubans required that all the furnishings be ordered from Cuba. One Cuban author recounts that the chapel held a “rich carpet” and a mahogany altar with a black rosewood and silver cross, behind which was a painted copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration, chosen because Father Varela’s church in New York City was the Church of the Transfiguration.
The carpet, cross and painting have all disappeared. The main body of the altar decayed and was rebuilt in the 1970s, but three original mahogany carvings were salvaged and placed on the reconstructed altar.
The central carving is a medallion of the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, lying on the Book of the Seven Seals described in the Biblical Book of Revelations. The other two carvings are corbels with floral motifs. The altar was from the workshop of Thomas Atteridge, an Irish cabinet maker who was among the leading furniture makers of prosperous and sophisticated 19th century Havana.
But the most visible reminder of Cuba are two pieces of marble on the crypt and the outer wall of the chapel. The outside stone features a bat-winged hourglass expressing the brevity of earthly time. Fern-like scrolls set off the inscription, the English translation of which reads “This chapel was built in the year 1853 by the Cubans to preserve the remains of Father Felix Varela.”
Inside the chapel, the stone that covers the crypt is inscribed in with a lacy Tuscan font. The English translation reads, “To Father Varela – The Cubans – Died February 25 of 1853.”
The stone slabs, probably from Cuba’s once-famous marble mines, were shipped to St. Augustine through New York and Charleston. The marble is most likely Gris Siboney from the Sierra de Las Casas, a gray to white stone flecked with darker grey streaks, the most common form of marble used in Cuba. In fact, it is this very stone that was used to build most of elegant Old Havana, and now brings a piece of Cuba itself to the heart of St Augustine.
Sources:
Antonio L. Valverde. La Muerte del Padre Varela.El Siglo XX; Havana, 1924.
José Ignacio Rodríguez. Vida del presbítero don Félix Varela. O Novo Mundo; New York, 1878.
Juan M. Navia. An Apostle for the Immigrants. Factor Press; Salisbury, MD, 2002
Joseph McCadden “The New York-to-Cuba Axis of Father Varela.” The Americas, New York, 1964, pgs. 376-92.