Battell initially served as the home of the Church of Christ in Yale, with a central pulpit, but the interior has been renovated many times as the needs of the community have changed. Unusually for a congregational church of its era, the church was originally built with highly ornate interior decorations rather than a more traditional plain white. Over time, subsequent renovations made the church interior significantly plainer, until a 1984 renovation that restored the chapel to its original Victorian colors and decoration. Other changes have included removing front row pews to create more performance space, preventing the automated tolling of the church’s five bells every quarter of an hour after student complaints about noise in the 1960s, and a new organ (a Holtkamp Pipe organ) being installed in 1951. The chapel has two organs, the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Memorial and the Thorne Family Memorial, in the Transept and the Apse respectively. Each can be played from consoles in either location.
Battell is famous for its stained glass windows, which commemorate many famous people from Yale history. Sturgis designed the Apse Memorial Windows, installed by Slack, Booth & Co of Orange, New Jersey in 1876. The center window of the apse features the name of Elihu Yale, surrounded by the names of the first nine presidents of Yale college. Stained-glass windows flanking the nave commemorate benefactors and professors of Yale, many of whom were theologians, including Jonathan Edwards, Bishop George Berkeley, Nathaniel W. Taylor and many others. A Tiffany window in the northwest upstairs corner was created in honor of Samuel Wells Williams, first professor of Chinese language in the United States. A Maitland Armstrong window in the nave pictures the philosopher Seneca, given in honor of Professor Thomas Anthony Thacher, distinguished professor of Classics.
