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Trinity Episcopal Cathedral
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| Location: | 121 W. 12th Street |
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| Built: | 1873 |
| Architect: | Edward Tuckerman Potter |
| Architectural style: | Gothic Revival |
| Governing body: | Private |
| NRHP Reference#: | 74000811[1] |
| Added to NRHP: | December 24, 1974 |
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral is the historic cathedral in the Diocese of Iowa. The cathedral is located on the bluff overlooking Downtown Davenport, Iowa, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. The cathedral complex is part of the College Square Historic District, which is also listed on the NRHP.
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The Episcopal Church can trace its beginnings in Scott County to services held in 1837 by the Rt. Rev. Philander Chase, Bishop of Illinois. The services were held in the hotel at Rockingham, which is now the southwest section of Davenport. In 1841 the Rev. Zachariah Goldsmith of Virginia was appointed missionary to Davenport by the Domestic Committee of the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. On October 14, 1841, Trinity Church was organized in Davenport. The congregation originally worshiped in the home of Dr. John Emerson on Second Street. He had owned the slave Dred Scott, who lived with him in Davenport when it was still a part of the Wisconsin Territory.[2] A small frame church was built on the corner of Fourth and Main Streets. In 1853 the congregation erected a stone building at the corner of Fifth and Rock Island (now Pershing) Streets. The building was built in the Gothic style and included a rose window. It is the first church in Iowa to have a pipe organ.[3]
The Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper, the missionary bishop of the Northwest, invited the clergy and representatives of the congregations of the state of Iowa to a meeting on August 17, 1853, at Trinity Church in Muscatine. In the absence of the bishop, the Rev. Alfred Louderbeck of Trinity Church in Davenport was elected the chairman. At this gathering the constitutions and canons for the new Diocese of Iowa were adopted, and plans were made for the election of a bishop. The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America admitted the Diocese of Iowa to its membership on October 7–8, 1853.
On May 31, 1854, the first convention of the Diocese of Iowa began at Trinity Church in Davenport. During the convention the Rev. Henry Washington Lee, rector of St. Luke's Church in Rochester, New York, was elected bishop. He was consecrated on October 18, 1854, in his church in Rochester.[4]
Through the generosity of people from the eastern United States, Bishop Lee purchased land as an investment for the new diocese. From the sale of this property a bishop's residence was built, and the diocese also had an endowment of $53,000.[4] On June 29, 1859, the bishop purchased the former Iowa College property in Davenport for $36,000. The school had moved to Grinnell, Iowa and was renamed Grinnell College. Bishop Lee opened Griswold College on the site. The school was named for Bishop Alexander Viets Griswold of Massachusetts. The college closed in the late 19th century.
When Bishop Lee arrived in Davenport he found that several people had left Trinity Church and wanted to create a new parish. He gave his permission and they formed St. Luke's Church. They initially worshiped in the former First Baptist Church on Brady Street between Third and Fourth Streets. The Rev. George W. Watson was named the rector. He was followed by the Rev. Horatio Powers. The congregation built a new church on the northwest corner of Brady and Seventh Streets, but because of financial difficulties they had to sell the property to First Presbyterian Church. The building eventually became the Academy of Sciences, a forerunner of the Putnam Museum. A chapel was constructed on the corner of Main and 12th Streets on the Griswold College property where the congregation worshiped until June 18, 1873, when it became the nucleus for the new Bishop's Church.
Bishop's Churches, or cathedrals, were not commonplace in the Episcopal Church of the United States at the time.[5] The Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour in Faribault, Minnesota, which had been consecrated in 1869 by Bishop Kemper, was the first church built as a cathedral. The cathedral in Chicago was the only other cathedral that existed in the country at the time. It had not been built as a cathedral, however.[5]
Bishop Lee began planning for the Bishop's Church after he received a gift of $30,000[6] from David J. Ely of Chicago in memory of his daughter, Sarah Ely Parsons, for the expressed purpose of building a cathedral. Edward Tuckerman Potter of New York City was chosen as the architect. He was the son of the Rt. Rev. Alonzo Potter who had been the Bishop of Pennsylvania, and one of his brothers was a priest in New York. The cathedral was designed in the English Gothic style. The cornerstone for the new cathedral was laid on June 17, 1867, on the Griswold College property on top of the bluff that overlooks the downtown area. The building was completed in 1873 according to 14 architectural drawings, but without the planned bell tower and spire. It is constructed of native Iowa limestone, trimmed in Indiana limestone. The roofline is adorned by wrought iron Gothic ornamentation. Nineteenth century stained glass windows illuminate the interior of the church.[3]
The Diocesan Convention of 1872 recommended that the structure should be a Cathedral Church. It was named Grace Cathedral after Grace Church in New York because a significant amount of the money that was raised to build the cathedral came from this one parish,[7] as well as David J. Wolfe and his daughter Catherine Lorillard Wolfe from another New York parish.[6] The church was built for $80,000, of which 10% of the money was contributed from people in Iowa.[5] Bishop Lee contributed several thousand dollars of his own money to finish construction and furnish the church. The cathedral was consecrated on June 18, 1873, by Bishop Lee who was joined by Bishops Robert Clarkson of Nebraska and Henry Benjamin Whipple of Minnesota, who preached the dedicatory sermon.[5]
Grace Cathedral was a Bishop's Church and not a parish church, although Bishop Lee had hoped that it would be so, possibly uniting with Trinity Church.[5] However, it was up to Lee's successor, the Rt. Rev. William Stevens Perry to implement the administration of the cathedral. Bishop Perry appointed a Dean and Chapter based on the English model. The Chapter was made up of the following officials: Praecentor, Chancellor, Treasurer, Canons, Rural Deans, and Honorary Prebends.[8] Not all of these offices were functional, not all of them were filled all the time, and the dean actually functioned like a parish vicar. The Very Rev. Dr. Willis H. Barris was appointed as the cathedral's first dean, and the Rev. Joseph S. Jenches, Jr. was appointed the first canon.
The Episcopal Church established other institutions in Davenport in the late 19th century that served the community into the 21st century, even though none of the institutions are supported by the church today. Bishop Perry announced plans for a girls school in 1883. The residence of Mrs. John L. Davies, which was named Cambria Place, was chosen as the location for the new school.[9] On September 24, 1884, St. Katherine's Hall opened to both day and boarding students. In 1902 the Sisters of Mary took over the administration and teaching responsibilities at the school.[10] In the years following the school expanded with the addition of a chapel and academic buildings. The Renwick mansion was added to the facility in 1907. In 1968 the school ended its boarding program and admitted boys. The name was changed to St. Katherine and St. Mark to reflect this change. In 1973, the school moved to the former home of Joseph Bettendorf in Bettendorf, Iowa, and in 1980 it amicably broke its ties with the Episcopal Church. In 2001, the school changed its name to Rivermont Collegiate.[11]
In 1884 the trustees of Griswold College began planning a school for boys. They built a structure opposite the cathedral on Main Street and it opened in September 1886 as Kemper Hall, named for the missionary bishop. It closed for lack of funds in December 1895. The building was sold to the public school district and it remains on the Central High School campus.
In 1893 St. Luke's Hospital was founded at the corner of Eighth and Main streets in Davenport and moved to its Rusholme Street location in 1914. In 1993, one hundred years after its founding, a merger was announced between St. Luke's and Mercy Hospital in Davenport, and the consolidated hospital opened in 1994 as Genesis Health System.[12]
In the meantime, Trinity Church moved to a new stone building on the southwest corner of Brady and Seventh Streets because its old church had been destroyed in a fire in 1874. It was built through the generosity of Clarissa Cook, an early benefactor to charitable organizations in Davenport and the Episcopal Church. She built the new church in memory of her husband, Ebenezer Cook, who had served on the vestry at Trinity for 30 years.[4]
The Rev. Theodore Nevin Morrison, rector of the Church of the Epiphany in Chicago, was consecrated as the third bishop of Iowa on February 22, 1899. During his episcopate it had become apparent that a merger between Grace Cathedral and Trinity Church was necessary. On Christmas Day 1909 both congregations worshiped in Trinity Church and on the following day, which was a Sunday, they worshiped together in the cathedral. In 1910 the corporation of Trinity Church was maintained and the cathedral was renamed. Trinity was now not only a Bishop's Church, but a parish church as well.
Christ Church, which had been established in 1864, had a small frame church building at the corner of Third and Pine Streets in the west end. It merged with Trinity Cathedral in 1928.
Several changes occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. The 1960s saw changes for the Trinity congregation with the establishment of two new churches in the Iowa Quad Cities. St. Alban's Church was organized in 1960 in northwest Davenport, and in 1966 St. Peter's Church was established in Bettendorf. In 1979 the Wolff & Associes pipe organ, opus 22, was installed in the gallery of the cathedral.[13] In 1988 Trinity's Dean, the Very Rev. Edward Harding MacBurney, was elected the seventh Bishop of Qunicy.[14]
The status of Trinity Cathedral was changed in the 1990s. During the episcopate of the Rt. Rev. Elwood Lindsay Haines (1944–1949) the bishop's residence and the diocesan headquarters were moved to Des Moines.[15] In 1992, when the Rt. Rev C. Christopher Epting was the bishop, the diocese announced that St. Paul's Church in Des Moines would became the liturgical cathedral for the diocese. Trinity would be maintained as the diocese's historical cathedral.[16] In 2010 Bishop Epting, now retired, became the interim Dean at Trinity.[17]
The Clarissa C. Cook Parish House, which had been built in 1917, began to deteriorate and had to be replaced. A fund drive in the parish raised two million dollars, and the new structure was completed in 1993. The building, designed to complement the cathedral, contains a Great Hall, kitchen facilities, parish offices, classroom space, children's chapel and a larger octagon shaped chapel. It is connected to the cathedral by two cloister walks. In the middle is an outdoor garden, or garth. It was named the Haines Parish House after the largest donor, Elizabeth Haines.
Ms. Haines also desired to fulfill the original plans for the cathedral. In 1998 she donated all the funds necessary to complete the cathedral's 131 foot bell tower and spire.[3] One hundred and thirty-one years after the cornerstone was laid by Bishop Lee, the cathedral was finished.
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