Trinity-St. Paul's Episcopal Church (New Rochelle, New York)

Infobox_nrhp
name =
Trinity-St. Paul's Episcopal Church

nrhp_type =nrhp
locmapin = New York


caption = In 1906
location= New Rochelle, NY
area =
architect= Upjohn, Richard & Co.; Merry, F. Carlos
architecture= Gothic Revival
added = July 12, 2006
governing_body = Private
refnum=06000576 cite web|url=http://www.nr.nps.gov/|title=National Register Information System|date=2007-01-23|work=National Register of Historic Places|publisher=National Park Service]

Trinity-St. Paul's Episcopal Church in New Rochelle in Westchester County, New York was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. It is located at the northwest corner of Huguenot Street (also known as the Boston Post Road) and Division Street. This church represents the body of the majority group of New Rochelle's founding Huguenot French Calvinistic congregation that conformed to the liturgy of the established Church of England in June of 1709. King George III gave Trinity its first charter in 1762. After the Revolutionary War, Trinity became a parish of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America.The present building is the third church erected by the conformist . It is the immediate successor of a wooden church building erected in 1823 - 1824. It stands on land that was conveyed to the church wardens by Aman Guion in 1743. The cornerstone was laid on August 13,1862, the church was opened for worship September 13,1863, and the tower completed November 30, 1864. The church was designed by Richard Upjohn, renown for his gothic revival architecture. A parish house was added on the western side of the church in 1892. Constructed of the same granite and brownstone materials as the church, the structure was designed by architect F.C. Merry, who also designed the New Rochelle Trust building on Main Street.

Church heirlooms

Within the stone walls of the church are a number of artifacts, or 'heirlooms', that have been handed down through generations of this 300 years old congregation. They highlight the long history of the church and of the New Rochelle community. A silver chalice presented to the church by Queen Anne of England, received after its conformation to the Church of England in 1709, is inscribed "Anne Regina". The stained glass windows in the chancel are memorials to Rev. Bondet, Rev. Pierre Stouppe and Rev. Michael Houdin, Trinity's first three ministers. Many other stained glass windows, some of which were crafted by Tiffany, grace the church. The 19th and 20th century congregants, for whom the windows were dedicated, include such names as "Iselin", "Weyman", "Davenport", "Thorne" and "Lathers". The old bell originally in the French Huguenot Church, Eglise du St. Esperit, on Pine Street in New York City, is preserved as a relic in the tower room. In 1823, it was presented to Trinity Church, New Rochelle, and hung up in the tower of the wooden church erected in 1823 - 1824.

Huguenot Burying Ground

The cemetery was originally located at the southwest side of Division Street at the corner of Union Avenue. The plot was part of the farm of Louis Bongrand, one of the first Huguenot settlers of the Town. In 1693 he gave the plot to the future residents of New Rochelle for a churchyard to bury their dead. [Town Records of New Rochelle 1699 - 1828, Jeanne A. Forbes, The Paragraph Press 1916, page.112] The land southeast of the plot was eventually bought by the English Church, now Trinity Episcopal Church. Over time, large strips of the surrounding land were sold for the construction of the New York and New Haven Railroad and New England Thruway. These projects cut off several sections of the old burying ground and required the removal of bodies and tombstones from it to the churchyard

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