The Chapel is the culmination of 30 years’ worth of dreaming, planning, and working by Dr. William Mann Irvine, founder and first headmaster (1893–1928) of Mercersburg Academy, and his wife Camille. Designed by Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942; of Cram and Ferguson), the Chapel was dedicated in 1926 to the memory of Mercersburg alumni killed in World War I. It was rededicated at the Centennial Celebration of the Academy in 1993 as the Irvine Memorial Chapel. The Chapel spire, a replica of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford, contains one of 163 traditional carillons in the United States.