Trinity Church ARCHITECT: Richard Upjohn DATE: 1839-46 STYLE: Gothic Revival, Church The present Church is a Gothic Revival monument, executed in brownstone by the noted ecclesiastical architect Richard Upjohn in a free rendering of English Gothic. The Church displays a wealth of ornament and detail, that it is a truly outstanding Church of one of New York’s oldest parishes and through its beauty and its wealth of historical associations, it is one of the outstanding monuments of the Gothic Revival.

Trinity Church ca. 1895 The present is the third Episcopal church on this site. Its spire was long a landmark on the horizon. Today we see it surrounded by high buildings, which tend to dwarf it, although in its day it was quite a large church. The quality of the Gothic Revival is well exemplified by the rather naive detail, the plaster vaults, and the traceried windows. The beautiful bronze doors, added at a later date under the supervision of Richard Morris Hunt, depict biblical scenes based on Italian precedent. That all the figures on the doors are not biblical is testified to by a little head on the frame of the right hand door; here we find sculptor Karl Bitter's "cher patron," Hunt himself, complete with beret and pointed beard.

Although Trinity Church now appears toy-like, nestled among glass and steel giants, its spire was once the highest point on the Manhattan skyline. Until the construction, in the 1890s, of such towers as the American Surety Building at 100 Broadway and 15 Park Row, the 284-foot tall church tower afforded views to sightseers. At the entrance, note the large bronze doors designed by Richard Morris Hunt and executed by Charles Niehaus, Karl Bitter and J. Massey Rhind, dating from 1890 to 1896. Architect Richard Upjohn used local brownstone for the church's exterior, feeling its dark tone well suited the building’s romantic architecture. This was a controversial decision due to brownstone's low status. Many considered it an unsuitable material for a church, especially one of the most prominent and wealthy churches in the city. A quiet and comforting rest stop, especially during the summer months, Trinity welcomes visitors. Trinity Church is also open daily to worshipers and offers an extensive schedule of services.

A walking tour of some of Lower Manhattan's most notable landmarks.

1 Wall Street, at the southern corner of Broadway, has long been a prized address. In 1905, the 30' by 40' lot that had been occupied since the early 19th century by a four-story commercial building changed hands for the highest price per square foot ever recorded for Manhattan property: $615 This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

One Wall Street was originally built as the headquarters for the Irving Trust, which was acquired by the building's present owner, the Bank of New York, in 1992. The corner of Broadway and Wall Street is a prestigious location, for which the Irving Trust Company paid dearly. It was an ideal site for a skyscraper because the graveyard of Trinity Church guaranteed direct sunlight and fresh air in perpetuity. Its rear on New Street faced the New York Stock Exchange and challenged the headquarters of rival Banker's Trust a block away at Wall Street and Nassau. Ralph Walker was the architect of numerous large-scale industrial and corporate buildings in New York. His first major work in the city was the Barclay Vesey Telephone Building. One Wall Street cuts a distinctive figure on Broadway. Unusual is the graceful façade that creates an effect of fabric-like lightness with its faceted limestone cladding. In contrast to the contemporary towers, One Wall Street depends on this subtle surface effect for its impact rather than an iconic crown or spire. Its highly expressive Art Deco styling was not for everyone: Lewis Mumford, an advocate of much more rational modes of modernist architecture, wrote in his first architectural review for The New Yorker that it was "mere swank, and unconvincing swank at that." The light colored exterior stone contrasts strongly with the opulence of the interiors, in particular, the rich red, amber, and gold mosaics of the reception hall. One of the most beautiful interiors in the Financial District, its theatricality seems more suited to the Ziegfeld Follies than to Wall Street. Designed by Walker in consultation with Hildreth Meiere, the room shimmers in tones rising from deep burgundy to gold. The lobby beyond was formerly highlighted by a wonderful abstract ceiling mural designed by Kimon Nicolaides and executed by Meiere. This space was altered beyond recognition in the 1960's, although Meiere's work may survive above the dropped ceiling. Inaccessible to the public is the observation lounge, which is marked by majestic thirty-foot windows at the tower's crown. In 1962 Walker's successor firm built an addition in a sympathetic but simplified style. But despite the grand interior design of the interior spaces, tourist visits are not currently allowed.

For much of New York's history, its Easter Parade was one of the most important parts of the Easter holiday. Starting in the 1880s, it quickly became one of the social events of the season.

Rector Street elevated station on the Sixth Avenue line, above Trinity Place, August 17, 1912. The photographer is facing downtown; Trinity Church is out of frame at left.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings on Wall Street.

John Watts Jr. Statue from Trinity Courtyard, March 1, 1938. The son of a Scottish immigrant father and a mother who belonged to the city founding DeLancey family, John Watts Jr. graduated from King's College (now Columbia University) and held a number of Colonial posts. He was New York’s last Royal Recorder, a role where he served as a mayoral assistant, judge, and a player in administrative and judicial functions. Despite his father's Royalist position, Watts Jr. sided with the colonies (according to sources) and would become the only Crown official who held elected state or federal office after the Revolution in New York. Watts became a New York State Assemblyman and later Congressman. He also established the Leake and Watts Orphan Home using an inheritance from a friend left to his son, and then himself when he son predeceased him. It was one of the first private charitable institutions dedicated to child welfare in the new country. Founded in 1831, the Leake and Watts Services, Inc continues to serve children in the New York area. The statue was erected by his grandson John Watts DePeyster in 1893 in his memory at Trinity Cemetery where Watts was buried following his 1836 death.

This is a collection of the smaller burial places that dot the landscape of the five boroughs. They are family burial plots and church graveyards, some full of 300-year-old grave markers and some with no monuments at all, some squished between storefronts and major thoroughfares and others hidden behind homes and walls. While most remain extant (if not always accessible), some have been lost to time and development.

Alexander Hamilton's grave, ca. 1920. July 11, 1804... Weehawken, New Jersey... a duel... Hamilton and Burr...with one bullet Hamilton falls and dies the next day. On July 14, 1804, Alexander Hamilton was buried at Trinity Church, after his body was carried from the home of his sister-in-law through the street, lined with thousands of mourners, to his final resting place. The city had declared the date a day of mourning. Gouverneur Morris, a friend gave the eulogy. The large grave marker seen here was not installed right away but donated two years later by Society of the Cincinnati, a Revolutionary War fraternal group of which Hamilton was President General.

Astor Memorial Doors, ca. 1912. In 1891 William Waldorf Astor commissioned a series of bronze doors for Trinity Church in honor of his father John Jacob Astor. Karl Bitter won the competition to sculpt the largest doors at the front entrance (Charles Henry Niehaus and John Massey Rhind, the runners-up worked on the smaller north and south doors). The 14-foot pair, seen here, was created with six panels illustrating Biblical scenes. The doors are topped by a 4-foot tympanum with Christ standing above depictions of his twelve apostles. While the smaller doors were installed in 1893, Bitter was quite busy with work at the World's Columbian Exposition and his pieces were not completed until 1896.

New York, the city of great heights. Let's admire some buildings that were at one time the tallest!

New York City is home to coffee lovers. For centuries, coffee has been sold, traded, and enjoyed in the city. One aspect of coffee culture that has aided its popularity is the coffee house. Coffee houses' locations throughout Lower Manhattan were essential to the foundations of the City's political and financial institutions. Providing both public and private rooms to men of all classes for discussions of business, politics, new ideas, and the latest gossip, coffee houses quickly rose in popularity. Although these institutions no longer stand their influences are still felt today. Join us as we travel to the locations of several old New York City coffee houses to see what has replaced them in their stead.

Trinity Building ARCHITECT: Francis H. Kimball DATE: 1904-07 STYLE: Neo-Gothic, Skyscraper The Trinity Building, built in 1905 and 1907, is among the first skyscrapers in New York designed in the neo-Gothic style. Among the notable design features of the building is its sympathetic relationship to Trinity Church, with its southern elevation providing an important and harmonious backdrop to the graveyard, thereby enhancing one of New York’s most important landmarks.

A walking tours through Lower Manhattan's skyscraper canyons and more than a century of high-rise construction. This walk focuses on the buildings around Broadway. This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

Between 1954 and 1957, the Municipal Art Society surveyed historic buildings in all five boroughs to create a database of potential landmarks to preserve. Local residents and MAS staff compiled individual sheets devoted to about 200 buildings. Each sheet outlined the building’s date, location, and style and provided a description and a small photograph. This is the list of Manhattan buildings.

Each month the Landmarks Conservancy celebrates New York City’s extraordinarily rich architectural heritage by featuring a different building style or function. In October, in observance of Halloween, we’ll highlight some of the City’s most bewitching cemeteries. From colonists to celebrities, these fascinating burial grounds around New York City are full of art, history, stories, and legends.

A fundamental role of the cemetery is to ensure a peaceful, final resting place for loved ones. They are also extraordinary living records of our society. Historic cemeteries tell us about design, ideas about mortality and death, and the historical social and political hierarchies of a locality. Especially important is the rural cemetery. Distinct from church graveyards, this is a 19th-century culmination of a movement that began in 18th-century Europe. The rural cemetery drew heavily on early garden aesthetics, embracing classical ideals of a pastoral utopia as embodied in the Greek region of Arcadia. In fact, nascent cemeteries evolved from garden memorials and burials, leading to a revolution in the way Western culture tended to its dead, and forever impacting its landscapes.

Trinity Church, ca. 1979. Constructed at the foot of Wall Street in 1698, the first Trinity Church faced the Hudson River. Captain William Kidd, later a notorious pirate, lent tackle from his ship to hoist stones to build the church. This Church burned in the Great Fire of 1776, which burned one third of the City just after British forces occupied it and was blamed by the British on revolutionary arsonists. The Second Trinity Church was completed in 1790; this time the Church faced Wall Street. At that time, New York was the U.S. Capital, and George Washington frequently worshiped at Trinity Church. Other notable parishioners included Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. Severe winters in the late 1830’s damaged the Church. Trinity gave Architect Richard Upjohn his first New York church commission for repair work. Trinity and Upjohn eventually decided to tear down the existing church and build the third Trinity Church in a Gothic Revival style designed to resemble a 14th century English parish church. The Church was consecrated in 1846. With its 281-foot-high steeple, Trinity Church dominated the Manhattan skyline until the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge rose 50 years later. Trinity Churchyard, adjacent to the church, is the burial place of many famous New Yorkers including Alexander Hamilton, Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton and her sister, Angelica Schuyler Church, and Robert Fulton. Trinity was the first Anglican Church on Manhattan, and, in 1705, Queen Anne granted 215 acres of land to support the church. Consisting of the land West of Broadway from Fulton to Reade Street and a strip along the Hudson from Duane to Christopher Streets and known first as “Kings Farm” and later as “Church Farm,” the land was first used for agriculture from which the Church paid its annual rent of 60 bushels of wheat. Over the years, Trinity developed the land and sold or gave away most of the original tract, but today retains 14 acres on which sits 5.5 million square feet of commercial real estate worth over $2 billion. This makes Trinity Church one of the largest landowners in Manhattan, and the recipient of a large income used for church operations, care of its historic buildings, and its philanthropic mission.