Ask Trinity Archives deals with the history of Trinity Church Wall Street, which is now into its fourth century in the same location in Lower Manhattan. A viewer of the video series recently sent a question about the origin of Trinity’s ownership of the land at Broadway and Wall Street.
The archives of Trinity Church Wall Street is a rare place, where digital records produced on a laptop or photos shot on an iPhone can be found alongside documents from the 17th century written in ink on parchment.
Alexander Hamilton died in his late forties, killed in 1804 in a duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr. Less known, at least until the Hamilton musical, is the death of Hamilton’s eldest child, Philip, at age 19, also in a duel, in 1801.
The history of Trinity Church Wall Street spans more than three centuries, and overlaps the history of both New York City and the United States, with those documents and stories preserved in an extensive archive.
Rejuvenation closed the nave of Trinity Church from May 2018 until Christmas Eve 2019. Colin Winterbottom photographed the entire process and invites us to watch 19 months of work displayed in a video that runs a little more than a minute.
The High Altar of Trinity Church Wall Street dates back more than 140 years, but has not been used for worship for almost half a century. When it returns to New York after rejuvenation, the altar will be placed in a new position.
Lisa Keller will talk about the noisy New Yorkers who transformed New York from a village to a world city in the 19th century. They did so by making the streets of New York their living room for daily life, and for popular protest.