2200 Spruce St., Trinity Memorial
Church
1874–1875, Henry Augustus Sims and James Peacock Sims; 1994–97, renovations and restoration, Atkin
Olshin Lawson-Bell

One of Trinity’s founders was real estate developer Lemuel Coffin, who recognized that churches were an essential ingredient in the successful establishment of a new neighborhood. The Gothic Revival exterior is rusticated brownstone laid in irregular courses. Henry Sims had trained as a civil engineer and worked on railroad construction, which may account for a unique aspect of the design: the skeletal iron flying buttresses that brace the upper wall of the nave. These contributions of the industrial age allow for a diaphanous curtain of stained glass windows in the clerestory. In 1994, a disastrous fire gutted most of the interior, but restoration and renovation have reclaimed the structure, now managed by the nonprofit Trinity Center for Urban Life.

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