Lee Chapel -- a focal gathering place for University events since its construction in 1867 -- will undergo a $2.5 million preservation and renovation late this year, thanks to the contributions of Washington and Lee Alumni, including an anonymous $1 million gift and a matching gift from Jack Warner '41 of Tuscaloosa, Ala. Work will be completed by the beginning of the 1998-99 academic year, just in time for the University's yearlong 250th Observance.

According to Lee Chapel director Capt. Robert C. Peniston, most of the work will be done on the museum level of the chapel below the main auditorium. While the museum area will be completely closed during the project, the main auditorium will remain open, except for very brief periods. Regular activities in Lee Chapel, says Peniston, should remain uninterrupted.

The main focus of the renovation will be the reworking of the museum space in the chapel basement. Other physical projects will include improving the environment for the University's valuable collection of paintings, including the Peale portrait of George Washington, the Pine portrait of Robert E. Lee and the Washington/Custis/Lee Collection in the museum. The only work planned for the main auditorium in an upgrading of the air conditioning system for a more closely controlled temperature and humidity. The paintings were restored in the late 1960s and early 1970s and remain in excellent condition, according to Thomas V. Litzenburg Jr. '57, director of the Reeves Center and acting chaplain of Washington and Lee.

"Our highest priority is to create a museum-level quality environment for the University's greatest treasures," says Litzenburg. "A lot of the money spent on the project won't be seen, as we take on the critical task of improving the environment in the entire building."

The Lee Chapel museum will be completely renovated to include state-of-the-art displays and a new storyline "that will speak to the heritage of George Washington, Robert E. Lee, and the history of the University," says Peniston. Three years in the making, the storyline has been the team effort of a committee consisting of author Mary Coulling (The Lee Girls), Litzenburg, Peniston, and W&L historians Taylor Sanders and Holt Merchant. The storyline defined by the University's painting collection and Lee family artifacts, will parallel the interrelated stories of the Custis, Washington, and Lee families with the history of the institution, says Litzenburg.

Other work downstairs will include tge addition of handicapped access to the museum; new, relocated restrooms; and the installation of a new security system/ The new downstairs entrance to the museum area will be near Traveller's gravesite, through existing doors which have not been used in recent years. While Lee's office and the family crypt will remain unchanged, Lee's original burial site (marked by a plaque on the floor in the center of the museum area) will be more prominent in the new plan.

Lee Chapel has seen very few changes over the years. Lee's office has been left intact since his death in 1870, and an addition to the back of the chapel to provide a monument to his memory was constructed in 1883. That addition includes the chamber where the famous recumbent statue of General Lee by Edward Valentine is housed, and the addition of the family crypt on the lower level. At that time, Lee's remains were moved from beneath the chapel near the center of the museum to the family crypt where his parents, wife, seven children, and other relatives are also buried. The museum opened to the public on Jan. 19, 1928.

A National Historic Landmark since 1961, Lee Chapel is Lexington's most popular tourist attraction, with nearly 55,000 registered visitors a year, as well as a favorite setting for weddings. And whenever there's talk of renovation, emotions begin to rise. Plans to enlarge the chapel in 1922 were greeted with cries of sacrilege. Lee Chapel "had become the focal point of Lee veneration," Washington and Lee professor of art Pamela Simpson wrote in 1986. "No other place would be as closely linked with Robert E. Lee as this chapel -- not the campus home where he lived and died, not his boyhood home in Arlington, not the house in Richmond where he lived immediately after the war."

In 1962-63, Lee Chapel underwent its only major renovation, "to assure its future permanence and enhance its appeal to its many thousands of annual visitors," financed by a $370,000 gift from the Ford Motor Co.

Two constants are certain to remain -- the hospitality of Lee Chapel hostesses Kitty Dunlap, Alice Furgerson, Sarah "Lovey" Mahoney, and Jane Stubbs, and the unexpected visits from, ahem, long-lost "relatives." "We deal with many people every week who truly believe they are descendants of General Lee," says Mrs. Furgerson, "even though the family chart disputes it."