History and Archives Videos

Does a device as simple to use and as ubiquitous as a scanner provide the path that brings historical artifacts into the digital age? Good question. The answer is more complicated than you might think. Watch the latest episode of Ask Trinity Archives with archivists Joe Lapinski and Marissa Maggs.

If we could somehow be transported back in time to a Sunday morning in either the late 18th or early 19th century, how likely is it that we would see Alexander Hamilton sitting in a pew during a worship service? 

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.

The status of the churchyard of Trinity Church Wall Street as a final resting place is significantly older than the parish itself.

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.

Take a tour of the Trinity churchyard, with information on the most famous person buried there, Alexander Hamilton,

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.