Our History
Trinity started in 1836, and since then quite a lot has happened. Our buildings are historic, as is our record of being in and helping the community outside our doors, but it is nothing to the spirituality of the people who make up the Community of Trinity.
The Early Days
In 1836 Trinity Church was formed by a few families from the overcrowded St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. In those early days the new church showed the same respect for diversity that is characteristic of Trinity today by calling as their first rector a 25 year old Native American, the Rev. Cicero Stephens Hawks. He and his wife came from North Carolina to strengthen and lead the new congregation and complete old Trinity Church, a small classic building at the corner of Washington and Mohawk Streets in 1842.
The women of the new Church formed the Ladies’ Aid Society and held a fair to raise the money for the first payment on the organ, establishing a tradition that still continues in Trinity’s Spring and Fall White Elephant Sales. The charitable work of the church members in those days saw the women of the parish taking baskets into the old tenement houses to offer help and comfort. Years later, during the Civil War, they worked with the Soldiers’ Aid Society.
The young church lost their first rector in 1843 when the Rev. Hawks left to become the first Bishop of Missouri. The Rev. Edward Ingersoll of Connecticut was called to Trinity from Geneseo, New York and he served as rector from 1844 to 1874.
Those thirty years were part of a period of rapid growth for Buffalo. The city had been chosen as the Lake Erie terminus of the Erie Canal, making it the gateway for all transportation and shipping between the Midwest and the East Coast. Buffalo’s population grew from less than 9,000 in 1832 to over 350,000 in 1900, when it was one of the ten largest cities in the country.
As Buffalo grew, so did Trinity Church. Sufficient seating capacity became a constant problem and a few members left to form St. John’s Church. The fortunes of many members of Trinity also had grown with the city, and some moved farther north on Delaware Avenue. The Rev. Ingersoll supported a group from Trinity who had bought property on Delaware Avenue at Johnson Park for a new Trinity Church to be designed by H. H. Richardson, but a large part of the congregation refused to move from the old building. Eventually the dissension became so great that the rector resigned, hoping that a new and younger leader might reestablish harmony.
That new rector was the Rev. Libertus Van Bokkelen who came to Trinity from Mount Morris, N.Y. Under his leadership the congregations of old Trinity and Christ Church agreed to consolidate in 1884. Christ Church had already built a stone building on Delaware Avenue that became Christ Chapel and a committee was selected from the two congregations to erect the new Trinity Church. Since the architect of Christ Chapel, Arthur Gilman, had died, Cyrus K. Porter, a Buffalo architect, was chosen to adapt Gilman’s 1869 design for a church adjacent to the Chapel that could seat nearly 800. Ultimately the congregation decided not to build the steeple designed for the tower on the northwest corner.
The ladies of the parish formed a furnishing society and earned by their sales the money to carpet and cushion the church and also pay for the large Rose Window over the front door. Led by Mrs. Charlotte Watson, who lived directly across Delaware Avenue from the church, they commissioned the artist John LaFarge to design the five chancel windows and the Rose Window. LaFarge was already famous in Boston and New York for his opalescent glass and he took this opportunity to fill the chancel with windows that told of the life of Jesus, based on European paintings from the High Renaissance. The ladies found donors for each memorial window and, during the next ten years, for twelve more memorial windows in the nave including four more by LaFarge and five by the young Tiffany Co.
The Rev. Bokkelen preached his final sermon on Easter, the first Sunday in the new Trinity Church. To continue the tradition of strong leadership and great preaching, the Rev. Francis Lobdell was called from New York City.
Led by Dr. Lobdell, Trinity’s Sunday School was prosperous. The Trinity Cooper-ative Relief Society that had been formed in 1880 for the help of the poor continued. Trinity House was established on Buffalo’s East Side offering classes for mothers, a boys’ club, a club for young men, a girls’ club and a kindergarten. Today Trinity reaches out in similar ways through its support of Homespace, Compass House and GLYS.
In 1892 the congregation was finally able to pay the mortgage and the new Trinity building was consecrated. A new organ was built in 1896. By 1905, more space was needed for meetings, classrooms and offices and the firm of Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson was commissioned to build a parish house adjacent to Christ Chapel. The Close area between the buildings was paved and the large Celtic Cross erected. In 1913 Bertram Goodhue returned to redecorate Christ Chapel as a memorial to the ten year old daughter of Charles Clifton. The result was a chapel for the children of Trinity that today is the home of the Sunday School.
The Middle Years
…coming soon…
