Two NY Churches: St. Paul’s Chapel & Trinity Church

To follow up my previous post about two notable uptown churches, here are two of the most famous and historic churches in downtown Manhattan.

Standing in the shadow of the One World Trade Center is one of the most historic and quiet buildings in the city: St. Paul’s Chapel.

Few buildings can so powerfully evoke the history of New York and of the United States as a whole. The chapel was completed in 1766, making it the oldest church in Manhattan and the only church on the island which dates from pre-Revolutionary times. Indeed, the church is so old that it dates from a time when New York was not the financial center it is today, but a provincial city in a relatively unimportant colony far away from the centers of power and commerce.

Unlike the city’s two cathedrals, therefore, St. Paul’s is a rather humble construction, dwarfed by the surroundings skyscrapers. From the outside, the church’s most striking features are its neoclassical portico and its large central bell-tower (when it was first built, St. Paul’s was the tallest building in New York—consider that). In design it is Georgian, modeled on the much larger St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in London. Unlike its pale English counterpart, however, St. Paul’s is grey and brown, since it was built using the local schist and brownstone.

The inside is, if anything, even less ostentatious than its exterior. If anything, the chapel’s whitewashed walls and spare decoration evoke a kind of ethereal purity, above all worldly riches. Only two works of art call our attention: an early painting of the Seal of New York and the Great Seal the American Seal (featuring a bird which looks far more like a turkey than an eagle, as Benjamin Franklin would have liked). Nearby a plaque is dedicated to the memory of George Washington, who would come here to pray in the early years of his presidency, when New York City was briefly the nation’s capital. Alexander Hamilton, some years before that, had drilled in the churchyard during the Revolutionary War.

The church has played a role in far more recent American history, however. During the horrific attacks of 9/11, the church served as an impromptu shelter for emergency workers. Firefighters and police officers slept on the pews, while volunteers prepared meals by the hundreds. The church became known as “The Little Chapel that Stood” during the ordeal, since it suffered no serious damage during the attacks. A small chapel in the back of the church commemorates this dark time, preserving some of the mementos that citizens left on the fences of the church as a memorial.

Behind the church is a graveyard, among the oldest in Manhattan. Among others, here is buried Richard Montgomery, a general during the Revolutionary War who was killed during an unsuccessful attack on Quebec.

St. Paul’s chapel, as its name indicates, is not a stand-alone church. Rather, it is a “chapel of ease” for those who found going to the parish church too far from the port, and thus too inconvenient. This explanation is a bit difficult to swallow, however, considering that St. Paul’s is literally a five-minute walk from the parish church: Trinity.

Trinity Church is, unquestionably, the most important church in NYC history. It has been around from the beginning. It was first opened in the closing years of the 17th century, serving as the parish church of the Church of England in what was then a small, provincial city, only recently transferred from Dutch to English control. The first church building, which I suppose was likely an impressive structure, burned down in 1776 during the Revolutionary War, shortly before Manhattan was evacuated by Washington’s troops and ceded to the British. A second building was erected in its place, where (like St. Paul’s chapel) Washington and Hamilton came to pray during NYC’s brief stint as the nation’s capital. But severe weather fatally damaged that building, too.

The church that stands today is the third version, which was finished in 1846. For many years its spire was the tallest structure on Manhattan, indeed in the United States—something that is difficult to believe nowadays, as the church is crushed to insignificance among the giant skyscrapers of Wall Street. In style it is gothic revival, though its design is muted and humble as compared with, say, St. Patrick’s Cathedral further uptown. What it lacks in splendor it makes up in simple beauty, which is difficult to find in Manhattan. Yet it is ironic, of course, that what was once the greatest building in New York City is nowadays charming for its small size.

The interior of Trinity is even more understated than its exterior. The gothic vaulting and pointed arches do not give their usual impression of extreme verticality, and in fact the space is inviting and human-scaled.

My most vivid memory of Trinity was when I was interviewing for my first job. The company was on Wall Street (though it was not in finance). I arrived quite early and wanted to kill some time before entering the building; and as it was raining, Trinity provided the perfect escape. I was desperate for a job and this was my first real interview, so you can imagine how nervous I was. I sat in one of the pews and read Ecclesiastes in one of the bibles, a chapter whose heroic fatalism helped to calm me. Meanwhile, a group of choral singers had set up near the altar and begun rehearsing, which allowed me to hear the church’s wonderful acoustics. It was a great way to calm down before the interview. I still did not get the job.

As with St. Paul’s Chapel, Trinity is surrounded by a graveyard, also one of the oldest in the city. By far the most famous burial is Alexander Hamilton (1755 – 1804), one of the most influential intellectuals and statesmen in the founding of the United States. His death was as dramatic and memorable as his life: shot down in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr, across the Hudson in New Jersey. His grave is fairly simple: a rectangular base topped with a pyramid, which duly lauds his memory. Next to Hamilton is buried his wife, Elizabeth Schuyler, who survived her husband by fifty long years. Alexander’s son, Philip, who died in a duel two years before his father, is also buried here.

Much further uptown, at 155th street, is another churchyard managed by Trinity Church. It is on the former estate of John James Audubon, and includes many famous burials, including Audubon himself. I have not visited yet, but I plan to.

For anyone in the area of Battery Park or Wall Street, these two churches provide a much-needed relief from the rush of suits and ties, the inhumanly vast buildings, the often hostile weather, and the relentless city noise. What is more, they are vessels of New York City history, nearly as old as the city itself.