Trinity Church Wall Street

2023Religious Buildings and MemorialsCultural

Year: 2023
Category: Cultural · Religious Buildings and Memorials
Type: Cultural
Status: Built
Firm: MBB Architects
Location: New York, United States

Rejuvenating a Lower Manhattan icon from the inside out, MBB helped Trinity Church Wall Street refocus its core building around worship and music—and become more sustainable. Starting with an intensive research process that engaged the Trinity Church community, MBB designed and implemented a phased restoration and renovation plan to meet contemporary needs, at once addressing deferred maintenance and reflecting the church's humanistic values. The comprehensive, six-year project includes restored architecture and ornament; a newly accessible chancel, altar and churchyard landscape; a higher-performing building envelope; new interior and exterior lighting; new clerestory windows; renovated clergy and choir rooms; three new organs; accessible bluestone terraces, improved acoustics, and concealed A/V equipment for services and concerts.

The 1840s neo-Gothic building—the third to stand on this site, designed by Richard Upjohn—now offers a more welcoming experience to congregants and millions of annual visitors. The site-wide accessibility plan culminates in a new accessible route to the repositioned altar. Electrical infrastructure is concealed to reduce visual clutter and restore architectural coherence to the nave. Height-adjustable LED pendants and clerestory sconces illuminate the nave, enabling people to read without glare. Brilliantly colored, early American stained-glass panels received full off-site conservation treatment.

Non-historic clerestory windows were replaced with new, contextually appropriate stained glass. Along the south terrace, a new cantilevered steel-and-glass canopy shelters the liturgical procession. This freestanding, minimalist awning rests on a foundation that straddles historic burial vaults—part of an overall site plan that upgraded the landscape and exterior lighting to welcome visitors to the verdant churchyard, a precious oasis in Lower Manhattan.