Nicola D'Ascenzo

Nicola D'Ascenzo (September 25, 1871, Torricella Peligna, Italy – April 13, 1954, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an Italian-born American stained glass designer, painter and instructor.

The couple returned to Philadelphia in 1896, where he worked as a portrait painter and opened D'Ascenzo Studios, initially an interior decorating firm.

[2] D'Ascenzo Studios created Art Nouveau interiors (and later stained glass facades) for Horn & Hardart restaurants, a chain of about fifty automats that began in Philadelphia in 1902.

[7] Architect Milton Bennett Medary assembled an extraordinary team of collaborators for his Washington Memorial Chapel (1914–17) in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania – built on the grounds of the Continental Army's 1777–1778 winter encampment.

The Reverend W. Herbert Burke, who led the decades-long effort to build the chapel, celebrated its completion: The glowing imagery of stained glass associated with perpendicular Gothic is seen in full perfection.

In this respect the chapel is comparable to the famous Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, but surpasses the European masterpiece in warmth and delicacy of execution as well as in symbolic appeal.

The Moorish Revival building was designed by architects (and brothers) Grant and Edward Simon, and nearly every surface in its sanctuary was covered with decoration.

These ranged from Leonardo da Vinci's sketches of flying machines to Charles Lindberg's 1927 flight over the Atlantic Ocean (only three years earlier).

In three pairs of windows (1940) for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City, D'Ascenzo drew parallels between Biblical scenes and contemporary life.

[21] The "Doubting Thomas" door at Christ Church Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan features a tiny bas-relief portrait of D'Ascenzo as a medieval craftsman.