Trinity Church

Javascript is required to view this map.

Found in Tour: Michigan Avenue

Landmark Images:
Trinity Church; Louis Kurz for Jevne & Almini, Lithograph, 1866-67 (ichi-64271)

Trinity Church; Louis Kurz for Jevne & Almini, Lithograph, 1866-67 (ichi-64271)

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.

 

Trinity Church before the Fire; Photograph, ca. 1870 (ichi-64361)

Trinity Church before the Fire; Photograph, ca. 1870 (ichi-64361)

View of Trinity Church after Fire of 1871; Jex Bardwell, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-63815)

View of Trinity Church after Fire of 1871; Jex Bardwell, Photograph, 1871 (ichi-63815)

Such scenes as this one led many to compare newly-destroyed Chicago to the storied ruins of Europe. Trinity was already losing members before the fire, and following its destruction it moved further from the advancing downtown, rebuilding in 1873 on Michigan Avenue at 23rd Street, near the homes of some of the wealthiest Chicagoans.  Trinity was not an isolated case.  The migration of churches away from the expanding business district was one of the pre-fire trends that the great conflagration accelerated.  After the fire, Trinity’s former property on Jackson Street became the site, successively, of the First Regiment Infantry Armory, the Illinois Theater Building, and, since 1962, the CNA Center.