42. Trinity Church and Graveyard
Location: 74 Trinity Place
Built: 1839-1846
Architect: Richard Upjohn
National Register Number: 76001252
Listed: December 8, 1976
Visited: September 28 and 29, and December 29, 2008
This is New York City's third Trinity Church. The first burned up in the Great Fire of 1776; the second was demolished in 1839 after a series of severe snow storms (oh, those were the days) weakened the structure. Our current Trinity was the tallest building in New York City until the construction of the New York World Building in 1890 and the subsequent skyscraper arms race, one of whose consequences was the dwarfing of the church. Trinity still has pride of place in the neighborhood, though: as you can see in countless photos of Wall Street, the church stands at its head, staring down the heathen money-grubbers as they make their way down the Stock Exchange and the House of Morgan. It also has pride of place in American architectural history, being the first really famous American example of Gothic Revival architecture. This in spite of the fact that St. John's Episcopal Church in Cleveland predates it some. This is also in spite of the fact that Trinity diverges from certain principles of Gothic architecture: according to Goldstone and Dalrymple's History Preserved, the buttresses and the vaults are merely decorative, whereas according to the 19th century advocates of the style, all parts of a Gothic ecclesiastical building are supposed to have both structural and aesthetic purpose.
Sigh. You know, I've been avoiding this one for months. Part of the problem is that I have no facility in the architectural vocabulary of churches. Nave and narthex, chancel and clerestory--I can't use these words to say sensible things about Trinity. I can't yet understand how these individual parts make a harmonious whole. It's similar to how I have some facility of the way harmony works in Western music, but not enough to talk about classical music without relying on thin variations of "it's pretty" and "I like it." And I'm also not sure Trinity is pretty or that I like it much. It may be a little anorexic (read: tall and thin) for my tastes.
I also can't take good photographs of it, it seems. A good photograph of a building, I've come to realize, is not a trivial matter when writing about it: a good picture can temper my feelings for a building, giving me insights into its possible beauty I couldn't get from living with it, walking past it, passively drinking in its shape day by day. For example, I thought of the Equitable Building as an unlovable lug until I had a chance to savor my pictures of it tipped with sunset orange; 19 Rector Street didn't inspire much thought until I saw its hot colors on a computer screen. With its sandstone brown (black from pollution before its cleaning) and life in the shadows of bigger buildings, Trinity fades into the stony colors of its surroundings, making it harder for me to distinguish its virtues, whatever they may be, in the photograph and in my mind.
Built: 1839-1846
Architect: Richard Upjohn
National Register Number: 76001252
Listed: December 8, 1976
Visited: September 28 and 29, and December 29, 2008
This is New York City's third Trinity Church. The first burned up in the Great Fire of 1776; the second was demolished in 1839 after a series of severe snow storms (oh, those were the days) weakened the structure. Our current Trinity was the tallest building in New York City until the construction of the New York World Building in 1890 and the subsequent skyscraper arms race, one of whose consequences was the dwarfing of the church. Trinity still has pride of place in the neighborhood, though: as you can see in countless photos of Wall Street, the church stands at its head, staring down the heathen money-grubbers as they make their way down the Stock Exchange and the House of Morgan. It also has pride of place in American architectural history, being the first really famous American example of Gothic Revival architecture. This in spite of the fact that St. John's Episcopal Church in Cleveland predates it some. This is also in spite of the fact that Trinity diverges from certain principles of Gothic architecture: according to Goldstone and Dalrymple's History Preserved, the buttresses and the vaults are merely decorative, whereas according to the 19th century advocates of the style, all parts of a Gothic ecclesiastical building are supposed to have both structural and aesthetic purpose.
Sigh. You know, I've been avoiding this one for months. Part of the problem is that I have no facility in the architectural vocabulary of churches. Nave and narthex, chancel and clerestory--I can't use these words to say sensible things about Trinity. I can't yet understand how these individual parts make a harmonious whole. It's similar to how I have some facility of the way harmony works in Western music, but not enough to talk about classical music without relying on thin variations of "it's pretty" and "I like it." And I'm also not sure Trinity is pretty or that I like it much. It may be a little anorexic (read: tall and thin) for my tastes.
I also can't take good photographs of it, it seems. A good photograph of a building, I've come to realize, is not a trivial matter when writing about it: a good picture can temper my feelings for a building, giving me insights into its possible beauty I couldn't get from living with it, walking past it, passively drinking in its shape day by day. For example, I thought of the Equitable Building as an unlovable lug until I had a chance to savor my pictures of it tipped with sunset orange; 19 Rector Street didn't inspire much thought until I saw its hot colors on a computer screen. With its sandstone brown (black from pollution before its cleaning) and life in the shadows of bigger buildings, Trinity fades into the stony colors of its surroundings, making it harder for me to distinguish its virtues, whatever they may be, in the photograph and in my mind.
Labels: Church, Financial District, Richard Upjohn
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