Welcome to the free external audio tour of Trinity Church Boston. We are glad you are here. Throughout the tour, please be mindful of your surroundings, as there are busy streets and a bustling city around you. This tour was completed in March 2025 as an Eagle Scout project by parishioner Henry Diver. Please enjoy the tour!
Identifier 1 (Porch Center)
Hello and welcome to Trinity Church in the City of Boston. On behalf of our entire church community, we’d like to welcome you to this audio tour of the church exterior. It’s our pleasure and privilege to introduce you to a building that’s both our parish home and one of the true gems of nineteenth-century American architecture.
This building has been designated a National Historic Landmark by the United States Park Service which marks its significance not only to Boston, but also to the entire nation. The American Institute of Architects has ranked Trinity Church among the top ten buildings in the country. And PBS, the American public broadcasting system, included Trinity in its 2013 program called Ten Buildings that Changed America.
With the completion of this church in 1877, a new architectural style was created. It was an American style, a bold, New-World re-expression of an early-medieval form, the Romanesque. The style came to be called Richardsonian Romanesque, named after a young American architect, named Henry Hobson Richardson. Here at Trinity, he developed a robust new style that became widely popular for a generation. Richardson would become America’s foremost 19th century architect and the first from this country to be recognized internationally. The building projects an overall effect of monumentality and permanence but also a clear sense of newness and originality. The Richardsonian Romanesque style quickly became very popular for civic and commercial buildings such as libraries, town halls, courthouses, and train stations.
As the plaque here notes, Trinity Church is an Episcopal Church established in 1733. At that time, Boston was part of the British Empire, and Trinity was a parish in the Church of England. After the American Revolution, the Anglican churches in the United States formed what is now the Episcopal Church. Originally located in another part of the city closer to Boston Harbor, Trinity prospered for many years. But by the middle of the nineteenth century businesses from the harbor had encroached on the neighborhood and the church had become isolated in what had become a commercial part of the city. Membership in the parish had dwindled.
A new life for Trinity began with the appointment of Phillips Brooks as its minister. A young, charismatic preacher, his arrival in 1869 reinvigorated the parish, which grew quickly. The congregation needed a more suitable location, and in 1872 they purchased the plot of land here in Copley Square in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.
That year, Henry Hobson Richardson was invited to a competition held to select the architect to design the new church. Educated at Harvard, Richardson studied architecture in Paris at the École des Beaux Arts, France’s renown academy of fine art, and was among the first Americans to be trained there. Richardson had stiff competition for this commission; there were entries from five other much better-known New York and Boston firms. Richardson’s bold new design won the day.
Identifier 2 (Porch Right)
The early medieval Romanesque style was freely adapted by Richardson to improve its visual appeal with the use of brownstone trim and decorative motifs. The reflection of the church seen in the glass tower across the street provides us with a view of the south side of the building and a convenient way to point out some of the key elements which constitute Richardson’s new signature style.
Trinity Church stands in this prominent location on Copley Square on a parcel of land which is completely surrounded by streets. This makes all sides of the church visible and was an important factor for the architect to consider. The floor plan of the church is an almost equilateral cross which forms the basis for the design of the building. A massive, square central tower rises 211 feet above the center of that cross. The tower is the axis around which the building is organized and gives the church an overall pyramid-like shape, and, as we will see, visual appeal from all sides. The tower is modeled after that of the Old Cathedral in Salamanca, Spain. Its clusters of windows separated by narrow columns provide light to the church interior. Turrets at each of the four corners of the tower flank shallow dormers. The eight-sided roof of the central tower is covered in red terra cotta tiles with decorative projections called crockets on each ridge line. The other roofs are covered in gray slate. A trio of large round arch windows is centered on the section below the tower.
The use of contrasting colors and building materials is a distinguishing feature of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The stone blocks which comprise the exterior walls of the building are a fine-grained, tannish-gray granite quarried in Dedham, Massachusetts. They are rough, or rock faced, and are laid in a random pattern. A dark red-brown sandstone called brownstone is used for trim. It was sourced from East Longmeadow in the western part of the state. Brownstone frames all of the doors and windows and punctuates the walls of the building with horizontal stripes. A checkerboard band of brownstone and granite squares runs along the side of the building. The wood window framing is painted in dark red.
Construction of the church began in earnest in 1873 and was completed 3 ½ years later at more than twice the original budget. Copley Square is located in the Back Bay section of Boston. The Back Bay was originally a tidal estuary, a marshy area where the Charles River met the salt water of Boston Harbor. In the 1850s, a 40-plus year project was undertaken to fill in this marsh, creating over 450 acres of new land for dwellings for the upper middle class and wealthy of the city. All of the buildings constructed during this time period, including Trinity Church, are standing on wooden pilings about the size of telephone poles. There are approximately 4,500 pilings under Trinity Church alone.
Identifier 3 (East Side)
We are now looking at the eastern side of the church dominated on the left by the semi-circular section of the building called the apse. On the right is the parish house,
The apse is ringed by seven large windows. Running along the tops of these windows, we see a floral pattern created between the brownstone and the granite, a pattern not uncommon in French Romanesque churches.
To the right of the apse is an enclosed outdoor space called a cloister. Its covered walkway connects the church to the parish house and frames a small garden. Notice again the familiar checkerboard pattern below the edge of the cloister roof. A beautiful window looks out from the parish house onto the garden; it is a memorial to Phillips Brooks designed by noted Boston painter and stained-glass artist, Sarah Wyman Whitman. Also notable in the cloister is a medieval pointed-arch window frame which came from Saint Botolph’s Church in Boston, England.
Looking up at the central tower, note the somewhat larger turret on the northeast corner with what appears to be the outline of a flight of stairs. This marks actual stairs inside the turret providing access to the attic space of the tower.
Another typical element of Richardsonian Romanesque seen incorporated into the façade of the parish house is an arcade formed by four brownstone arches atop a series of slender columns.
Following the walkway around to the north side of the church, the parish house offers another Richardsonian feature, clusters of windows separated by narrow columns. Here we see a trio of windows looking out towards Boylston Street. The center window was also designed by Sarah Wyman Whitman’s stained-glass studio. On the west side of the parish house is an interesting flight of stairs on the outside of the building. These stairs at one time provided access to a large meeting room on the top floor. Here on the north side of the church we see the familiar pattern of paired windows
Of note is the statue of Phillips Brooks, which was unveiled in 1910, 17 years after his death in 1893. The design of the statue was the work of famed American sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens. Saint Gaudens had died prior to its completion, and the final work was executed by his student, Frances Grimes. The base and surround were the work of architects McKim, Mead and White, who designed the Boston Public Library across Dartmouth Street from the church.
Identifier 4 (Porch Left)
Positioned on the left and right of the façade are two smaller towers. These generally follow the same design as the central tower, with pairs of windows on each of the four sides. The pyramidal roofs of the towers are covered in brownstone tile. Below the cornice is a chevron, or zig-zag, pattern laid with brownstone and granite with red mortar. A five-arch arcade centered below the chevron band is executed in brownstone with the outer two arches filled with stone and the center three holding stained glass windows. The arcade is flanked by paired windows. Five steps up from the plaza is the triple arched entrance modeled after a Romanesque church in Provence, France.
The porch, while envisioned by Richardson, was a later addition completed around the turn of the 20th century. It was designed by Charles A. Coolidge, one of a trio of Richardson’s staff architects who took over operation of the firm after his death in 1886. Unlike the rest of the church exterior, the porch is home to extensive Christian symbolism, statuary, and scenes illustrating scripture. Responsibility for the porch sculpture went to the firm of Boston stone carver John Evans and was executed by sculptors Hugh Cairns and M. Domingo Mora.
- Large figures (left to right) :
- Abraham, Moses
- Isaiah, St. Mathew, St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John, St. Paul
- Augustine, Phillips Brooks (1926)
- Smaller figures
- Samuel, David, Solomon, Daniel, Elijah
- Mary, Anna, Elizabeth
- Mary of Bethany, Martha, Mary Magdalene
- John Wycliffe, Richard Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, John Robinson, John Wesley
- Scenes
- The Lord Upon His Throne, Worship of the Golden Calf
- Peaceable Kingdom, Nativity
- Baptism of Jesus, Jesus in the Temple with the Doctors
- Prodigal Son, Blessing the little children
- Entry into Jerusalem, Last Supper, Christ before Pilate
[The figures are named so reading out all of the figures might be part of an optional, deeper dive into the porch iconography].
The design of Trinity Church which we have seen today constitutes a recognized milestone in the history of architecture in this country. However, Trinity’s unique collection of 39 figural stained-glass windows done by leading British, French and American studios along with a revolutionary interior decorative program featuring large scale murals created by created by American artist John LaFarge add to the significance of the of this building and are well worth seeing. To experience the remarkable interior of the church, self-guided tours, audio tours done in multiple languages, and docent led tours are available. For more information, please see the visitor’s services representative stationed inside the main entry.
Trinity is an active Episcopal church here in Boston. We also welcome you to come back for one of the various services during the week and on Sunday.
Thank you for joining us on this tour today.
A very special thank you to Jillian Storez, Cynthia Staples, Peter Smiledge, Bob Yearwood, Alejandro Latorre, Rhiannon Esposito, Olin Arcese, Dominic Barsanti, Morgan Beckford, Brigitta Patterson, Kevin McLaughlin, Rob Hess, Colin Lynch, Jerrick Cavagnaro, Rodrigo Larios, and the rest of the Trinity Staff for their contributions to the project.
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