Trinity Cathedral is an Episcopal Church in

downtown Pittsburgh Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River who ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and is the

cathedral A cathedral is a church that contains the '' cathedra'' () of a bishop, thus serving as the central church of a diocese, conference, or episcopate. Churches with the function of "cathedral" are usually specific to those Christian denominatio ...

for the

Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh is a diocese in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Geographically, it encompasses 11 counties in Western Pennsylvania. It was formed in 1865 by dividing the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania ...

. The present

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

church was completed in 1872 on the site of a hilltop cemetery on land deeded by heirs of Pennsylvania founder

William Penn William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy a ...

to the congregation's founders. The site, centered on a terrace above the historic "point" (where the Allegheny River and the

Monongahela River The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-cen ...

join to form the Ohio River) was sacred to Native Americans as a burial ground. The Trinity Churchyard has the oldest marked graves west of the

Atlantic Seaboard The East Coast of the United States, also known as the Eastern Seaboard, the Atlantic Coast, and the Atlantic Seaboard, is the coastline along which the Eastern United States meets the North Atlantic Ocean. The eastern seaboard contains the coa ...

, of both Native American leaders, French, English, and American colonists.

1780s Round Church

The first Trinity Church was built two blocks to the west of this burial ground at the base of the hill or terrace initially. It was constructed from the 1780s to 1805. This first church was a brick building, octagonal in shape in the meeting-house style of architecture. It was known as “The Round Church.” It was situated on a sort of triangular lot with streets on each of the three sides, so that enlargement was out of the question."

1824 Cathedral

In 1824, Trinity moved to its current site in the middle of the terrace churchyard with what is regarded as the first

structure in Western Pennsylvania.

John Henry Hopkins John Henry Hopkins (January 30, 1792 – January 9, 1868) was the first bishop of Episcopal Diocese of Vermont and the eighth Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. He was also an artist (in both watercolor an ...

was the architect for the new building. He designed it to seat a thousand people. Hopkins' plans were adopted by th
Vestry
without alteration. On May 1, the feast of S. Philip and S. James, the corner-stone was laid. The building was "brick, roughcast on the outside." The Church was wide, with galleries on three sides, supported by slender cluster. The ceiling was "painted in imitation fan-vaulting." The growing congregation built St. Peter as a chapel of ease. However, in 1869 the growing congregation erected a new structure.

Current Cathedral

The cathedral was designed by architect

Gordon W. Lloyd Gordon W. Lloyd was an architect of England, English origin, whose work was primarily in the United States, American Midwestern United States, Midwest. After being taught by his uncle, Ewan Christian, at the Royal Academy, Lloyd moved to Detroi ...

in 1870–71 with an exterior featuring English Gothic Style that was favored by mid-Victorian Episcopalians including a single central steeple and side transepts. The interior features a tall nave flanked by aisles and lit by

clerestory windows In architecture, a clerestory ( ; , also clearstory, clearstorey, or overstorey) is a high section of wall that contains windows above eye level. Its purpose is to admit light, fresh air, or both. Historically, ''clerestory'' denoted an upper l ...

. The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

walls are supported by clustered stone columns, and the austere interior ornamentation, in which the pointed arch predominates, is reminiscent of the work of the American Gothicist

Richard Upjohn Richard Upjohn (22 January 1802 – 16 August 1878) was a British-born American architect who emigrated to the United States and became most famous for his Gothic Revival churches. He was partially responsible for launching the movement to su ...

. Some of the stained glass windows in the nave were destroyed in a fire in 1967, and were replaced by new ones in a medieval style. All other windows date from 1872. The carved stone pulpit was built in 1922 to the design of the renowned American architect Bertram G. Goodhue. In 2007, the cathedral exterior was cleaned for the first time in preparation for the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary. The cleaning removed remnants of industrial soot dating to Pittsburgh's steel making days. The grime was causing acid runoff to deteriorate the exterior stonework.

Anglican Realignment

In preparation for the October 2008 schism, the Cathedral Chapter adopted a special resolution on July 24, 2008. It stated the Cathedral Chapter's intention "...neither to withdraw from The Episcopal Church nor to withdraw from a realigned Diocese of Pittsburgh." Over the next three years, the cathedral continued to be led by the Rev. Dr. Catherine Brall as

Canon Provost Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the conceptual material accepted as official in a fictional universe by its fan base * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western can ...

and included elected representatives from both the continuing and breakaway dioceses and the cathedral's lay delegate had voice and vote in both the Episcopal and realigned Anglican diocesan conventions. The arrangement was terminated on December 15, 2011, when the Cathedral Chapter voted to reaffirm its original 1928 articles of incorporation which specified that Trinity Cathedral was an Episcopal congregation. In June 2015, Bishop Dorsey W. M. McConnell restored Trinity Cathedral to the center of diocesan life by relocating diocesan offices to the downtown cathedral from the suburb of Monroeville. During the tumultuous realignment, diocesan offices had been located in the Oliver Building between 1999-2009 and the Jonnet Building in Monroeville from 2009 to 2015.

References

External links

* {{official website, http://www.trinitycathedralpgh.org/
City of Pittsburgh Trinity Church website

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article on the graveyard and cathedral

Graveyard's history
19th-century Episcopal church buildings cathedrals in Pittsburgh cemeteries in Pittsburgh churches completed in 1872 churches in Pittsburgh Episcopal cathedrals in Pennsylvania