Trinity Episcopal Church at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway - one of the oldest in the United States. Her sharp spire with a gilded cross rises 86 meters and even against much higher skyscrapers looks very impressive. The history of the church is unusual.

A modest first building Trinity Church was built on this spot in 1698. New York was then a small town, a significant portion of income that provides moored in a local marina pirate ships. The purchase of land for the church endorsed Governor Benjamin Fletcher, received bribes from the pirates. One of the filibusters, Captain William Kidd, even lent his ship to tackle the construction work.

During the war for independence New York became the base of the British forces, trying to quell the rebellion of the colonies. During fighting in 1776 Lower Manhattan burned, a fire destroyed the church, survived only a chapel of St. Paul. In it he prayed after his inauguration in 1789, the first president of the United States, George Washington.

In 1790 on the site of the burnt new building was constructed, which, however, did not withstand the strongest snowfall winter 1838-1839 years: the roof collapsed, the skeleton had to be dismantled. The third building, the current, designed by British architect Richard Upjohn immigrant, it was completed in 1846.

Trinity Church - a classic example of Gothic Revival. It was the tallest building in New York City until 1890, when the palm intercepted skyscraper New York World Building (owned by the famous publisher Joseph Pulitzer, demolished in 1955). Church steeple with a cross shining for decades has been a beacon for ships entering the harbor of New York.

In 1976 the church was visited by the British Queen Elizabeth II. It had solemnly handed 279 peas pepper. In 1697 the English king William III approved the charter of the church in which she was obliged to give the crown as rent a pea pepper a year. Colony won independence forgotten about it, and the Church of debt repayment.

September 11, 2001, hundreds of people were able to take refuge in the church of the first wreckage of the collapsed World Trade Center towers. Debris had broken a huge plane tree, for almost a century in the cemetery chapel vysivshiysya St. Paul (to the north of the church). Sculptor Steve Tobin cast bronze copy of the roots of the tree - this sculpture installed near the temple.

Entrance to the church through the massive bronze doors (a gift from a wealthy lawyer William Waldorf Astor). On the north and east doors depict scenes from the Old and New Testaments, on the south - from the history of New York. The interior is decorated with colorful stained glass windows, the most remarkable of them, with images of Jesus and the Apostles - above the altar. In the church there is a small museum which exhibits historical documents, including the very charter of King William III, who paid for peppercorns.