Trinity Episcopal Church, ca. 1894 — Columbia, South Carolina. Located at 1100 Sumter Street, directly east of the South Carolina State House, Trinity Episcopal Church is one of Columbia’s most distinguished historic landmarks and an important early example of ecclesiastical Gothic Revival architecture in the South. Founded in 1812, the congregation replaced its original frame church with the present stuccoed-brick sanctuary, designed about 1840 by Charleston architect Edward Brickell White. Construction began in 1845, and the building was consecrated in 1847, with the transepts and extended chancel added in 1861–1862. The church reached its present form in 1894, making that year an appropriate date for a stat sheet describing its completed nineteenth-century appearance. Modeled after York Minster in England, the building is distinguished by its cruciform plan, symmetrical façade, two ornate front towers, pointed-arch openings, arched oak doors, and four-shouldered buttresses. Its scored stucco exterior and towered silhouette give the church a monumental presence across from the State House, where it forms a striking architectural counterpoint to the seat of state government.

National Register+1

The interior and surrounding churchyard reinforce Trinity’s architectural and historical importance. Most of the stained-glass windows were imported from Munich about 1860, while the marble baptismal font was designed by sculptor Hiram Powers; the sanctuary also retains a wooden roof supported by hammer-beam trusses, box pews, a brass pulpit, tiled flooring, marble chancel rail, and hand-carved walnut choir stalls. The church’s adjacent graveyard contains the remains of numerous prominent South Carolinians, including governors, Revolutionary War officers, Confederate generals, poet Henry Timrod, the Wade Hamptons, and Dr. Thomas Cooper. Trinity survived the burning of Columbia in 1865, and its continued preservation reflects the congregation’s long-standing role in the city’s religious, educational, and civic life. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places on February 24, 1971, Trinity Episcopal Church—now Trinity Episcopal Cathedral—remains one of Columbia’s most significant historic buildings and one of the state’s finest expressions of nineteenth-century Gothic Revival design.