A handful of local would-be parishioners, including a number with southern connections, founded Trinity in 1833, building a modest Greek Revival meeting hall as their church.

Miller Chapel, a stone's throw away on the Princeton Theological Seminary campus, is a similar building by the same local architect-builder, Charles Steadman, who also designed many houses in the neighborhood.

[3] In 1870 the original structure gave way to a larger, more assertively Episcopalian building designed in the Gothic Revival style by Richard Upjohn and his son.

This rigorous program has continued under a succession of notable Episcopalian and Anglican musicians including James Litton and John Bertalot.

During the baby boom of the late 1940s and the 1950s, Trinity experienced explosive growth in young families with children, with a burgeoning Sunday school (at one point claiming five hundred members).

Through that period the parish ministry remained essentially traditional, with outreach a minor component and the rector and assisting clergy very much in charge.

Robert Spears saw Trinity through the fire and rebuilding of the mid-1960s, and after seven years' tenure became bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, New York.

James Whittemore served from 1967 to 1977, during which Trinity evolved into something like its modern form, with expanded lay leadership, liturgical renewal, a revised church, enlarged facilities, and a more diverse and welcoming congregation.

[citation needed] Whittemore left to head the Seamen's Church Institute in New York City, now led by former interim rector the Rev.

His tenure included expanded outreach, consolidation of the many liturgical changes of the preceding years, and planning for needed facility improvements.