Art & Architecture

Trinity Church is a beautiful church, steeped in art and architecture. Below is a description with highlights of this truly exquisite structure.

After consulting neo-Gothic pioneer Ralph Adams Cram, architect George W. Chickering modeled Trinity in the same style of English Perpendicular Gothic churches as the fabled Kings College Chapel at Cambridge, England.

Built from durable pale limestone, Trinity has nine bays (Kings has twelve), each with a pointed gothic window separated by sectioned buttresses and capped by pinnacles topped with crosses. Each corner features a windowed octagonal tower with gargoyles and an upturned pinnacle spire. Traditional battlements trace the church roof. A cross stands atop the eastern and western apexes. Unlike Kings, Trinity has a timber frame roof, a narthex, a transept chapel to the south, and an aisle on each side. Wooden roofs on the aisles conceal flying buttresses. Lightly ornamented side and front doors provide entry to the narthex, and a small cross adorns the apex. Two skylights in a timber roof naturally illuminate the narthex. An exterior iron lamp hangs over each door.

The transept chapel is styled on the Chantry Chapel of Lincoln Cathedral in England and has thirteen stepped buttresses capped by triangular pinnacles. The battlements are ornamented with heraldic shields. The entire interior length of the chapel is separated from the church by sliding pocket doors neatly designed into an interior wall.

Trinity has 32 stained glass windows: two smaller windows in the narthex, two near the rear door, ten six-foot high triptychs surrounding the chapel, and eighteen epic windows with tracery in the main church. The grandest is the Te Deum over the altar, designed by William E. Roberts. It contains 54 figures portraying the Triumph of Christ. The ten chapel windows, also by Roberts, depict medieval saints, kings and early church fathers.

Sixteen clerestory windows, created by the preeminent American stained glass artist, Charles J. Connick, depict the richness of the Gospel and the promises of the Messiah. Each includes a medallion representing one of the Holy Trinity, a prominent saint, or an apostle. Finally, the great window over the church entrance, also by Connick and dedicated to the Rev. Sullivan, depicts parables of Jesus teaching the care of one’s flock.

Equally beautiful, is the interior woodwork by Robert Casson. In the main entrance, paneled oak doors four-inches thick hang beneath intricately laced spandrels; the jambs are adorned with sectioned oak columns reminiscent of the stone arch piers found at Kings. A tympanum panel, dedicated to the fallen of the Great War, bears an inscription in gold lettering and is flanked by two painted angels in relief facing each other.

Throughout the church, the walls and bench panels are uniformly inset with arches matching the clerestory window tracery. Prayer benches at the back and in the chancel have elaborate figures carved as end posts.

In the chancel, the pulpit has a post shaped as a young angel, the lectern has the figure of a standing angel with halo. Two rows of benches seat the choir on either side of the chancel, with the left being interrupted by the organ console. Additionally, two ornate chairs decorate the chancel on the left: one, just behind the lectern is crowned with gothic spires, and the other, behind the altar rail, is designated for a bishop and is capped by a more elaborate pierced crown with spires.

The organ box is supported by three braces, each carved as a singing angel with choir sheet. Friezes at the top and bottom of the box contain leaf foils.
A ten-foot-long altar stands in front of a gold leafed reredos with dramatic paintings. Seven arched panels (one central and three on each side) emulate a triptych depicting Christ in the center surrounded by angels, bishops and kings, then, in successive panels, by princes, knights and commoners.