Trinity Episcopal Church was designed by Theodore V. Wadskier and built in 1860 on the south side of Jackson Street between Michigan and Wabash. The view here is from the east. This was the second home erected by the congregation, which was formed in 1841 when the members of St. James Episcopal Church, located in the North Division, decided that the city’s growth demanded the establishment of a second Episcopal congregation, this one in the South Division (in 1851 a third congregation, Grace Church, was organized). The first Trinity Church stood on Madison Street near Clark.
According to Daniel Bluestone, Trinity provided a model for churches built in residential neighborhoods by "adopting the form of the small Medieval English parish church rather than the form of the great city cathedral.” Not that Trinity was especially small. It could seat a thousand people on its main floor, another four hundred in its galleries.
