Trinity Episcopal Church

The Episcopal Church in Castine, Maine, offering services Sunday mornings at 9

History

post card of Trinity Episcopal

Built as a summer church “well before nineteen hundred,” according to a booklet published by parishioners in the 1950s, the 1300-square-foot Trinity Chapel seats approximately 130 people. Designed by Caroline Schenck, building is an outstanding example of Arts and Crafts architecture.  Responding to the ideas of that movement, Schenck rejected the classical symmetry of most 19th-century church designs and aimed instead at creating a building that would seem to grow naturally out of the landscape.  Working with a small lot on sharply rising ground, she used only local building materials, particularly the stone that dominates the Maine coast.  With a stone wall running along the front edge of the property, the building nestles into the hillside and seems almost an outcropping of the ground itself. 

In spite of the size of the lot, Schenck provided worshippers with a dramatic approach to the chapel.  A winding path carries the worshipper along the length of the building up to its end and then doubles back to the church steps for a dazzling view of the harbor. 

Schenck also created a dramatic effect by  designing an interior space that is almost subterranean, with stone walls lit by small earth-tinted windows high on the side walls.  She intended Trinity Chapel to be “a sanctuary for the worship of God, a trysting-place where the soul may meet its Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier, the Ever-Blessed Trinity.” 

A parish hall addition, erected in 1995, has been designed to harmonize with Schenck’s design, while tripling the space available for the needs of what is now a year-round parish.

Trinity Episcopal Church - Castine, Maine | A member of The Episcopal Diocese of Maine, The Episcopal Church, and the Worldwide Anglican Communion