So many dates feature prominently during a walk of the church and property of Trinity Episcopal Church in Saugerties, N.Y. A large Bible from 1857, with delicate pages, is behind the church pulpit. A lectern contains four intricately carved wooden images of the evangelists such as St. Mark as a wooden lion and John as an eagle, created in an 1870s rebuilding of the chancel after a terrible fire in 1867. In the parish hall, a 1922 Tiffany-style window memorializes a congregation family with a magnificent mountain scene. A booklet full of photos shows the parishioners gathered in 2006 to celebrate the church’s 175th anniversary.

None of the church’s history, spirit, and beauty would survive and remain today, however, if not for the committed congregants in this Hudson Valley church in the year 2022. That sense emerged in my walk of the historic church to highlight Trinity Episcopal Church’s participation in the 2022 Sacred Sites Open House weekend on July 23-24, which the New York Landmarks Conservancy held in concert with partnering organizations. Trinity Episcopal was one of dozens of ecclesiastical places throughout New York State — churches, temples, synagogues, and other spiritual sites — that offered tours and programs for the public. It was the Conservancy’s 12th annual Sacred Sites Open House after a hiatus during 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid pandemic. (In July, I wrote about Trinity Episcopal and its plans for the Sacred Sites weekend for Hudson Valley One.)

This yearly event gives people around New York State an opportunity to take in and appreciate the sacred presence, architecture, cultural importance, and community contributions that spiritual places embody over generations, as Trinity Episcopal has. Moreover, the church reflects the intertwining of the church with the history and transformation of the village and area surrounding it. It is the oldest Episcopal Church in Ulster County and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Saugerties was a tiny village before this church existed, and the church’s founding is one of the integral pieces of the village’s major change and growth into a new industrial town in the early 19th century. Henry Barclay, a New York City-based importer who decided to focus on building water-based industries, saw opportunities in obtaining the water rights of Esopus Creek in the village area. Barclay constructed a dam on the creek and established a paper mill in 1827 and the Ulster Iron Works in 1828.

Barclay, who was devoted to the practice of his Episcopalian faith, set out to create not just industries but a full-fledged “model village.” He built a bridge over the Esopus Creek and a hotel. Barclay and his wife, Catherine Watts Barclay, had ties to Trinity Church in Manhattan, and along with Catherine’s brother, John Watts Kearny, they founded and built Trinity Episcopal Church in 1831-1832. (The village incorporated as Ulster in 1831 and changed its name to Saugerties in 1855.) As Barclay brought iron workers from England to the Hudson Valley village, he encouraged the workers to attend the new Episcopal Church. Similarly, a couple of years afterward, Barclay was instrumental in supporting and helping to oversee the construction of a Catholic church for the Irish immigrants who worked in the mills, St. Mary of the Snow. Trinity Episcopal and St. Mary of the Snow churches grew as their respective congregations drew from those working in Saugerties’ mills and settling in the town.

Trinity Episcopal Church exterior

Buildings reflect changing societal values and tastes. In the architecture and art of Trinity Episcopal during the 19th century, one can see how the congregation overcame a major setback and transformed the church’s worship space in architectural style, features, and design for a new age. As with banks, courthouses, and other public structures in the 19th century’s early decades, architects designed churches in the early Classical Revival style. The style dominated in an era when the young nation sought to emulate the temples and other edifices of ancient Greece and Rome. It was a visual statement that conveyed the desires in the new republic to have lasting greatness.

Trinity Episcopal exemplified this approach in what was then a growing community. Ralph Bigelow is said to have designed the church, which was among the first Ulster County churches to employ the form of an ancient Greek temple, as architectural historian William Rhoads writes in his book, Ulster County, New York: The Architectural History and Guide. Set at a prominent site along the Ulster-Kingston Road, the simple yet stately church possessed four fluted Doric columns, a triangular pediment, and a very high front door in the center. Around 1840, the church gained a tapering spire atop a two-stage tower, Rhoads notes. The church has since lost its spire but otherwise still has the straightforward, unadorned look of an early 19th century structure.

If the church’s exterior evokes a simple classical form from its earliest days, the interior evolved differently. Its main features and furnishings exhibit Victorian-era embellishment, beauty, and intricacy. By the 1860s, the Gothic Revival had taken hold in public buildings and was favored for ecclesiastical design. In 1867, a major fire severely damaged the southern end of the church. To design a new chancel (the space around the altar), the congregation chose Edward Tuckerman Potter, a prominent architect whose work included the 1871 Mark Twain house in Hartford, Conn., and the Harvard Street Congregational Church in Boston.

The most stunning addition to the church’s chancel occurred during this rebuilding: a splendid eight-panel stained glass window at the front of the church that Potter secured. The London firm of William Morris, the artist, philosopher, and foremost advocate of the Arts and Crafts movement, crafted the window. It was the first window by Morris’ firm – Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. – that an American client commissioned. Striking in its vivid colors and evocative facial expressions, the window depicts scenes of Christ’s life, alternating with panels of angels holding scrolls with Latin inscriptions. The church’s purchase of the window, which was $3,000, occurred due to the generosity of longtime supporter Else Vanderpoel, in honor of her late husband, Judge Aaron Vanderpoel. She was the benefactor whose support underwrote the purchase of Potter’s furnishings, in honor of the judge and other members of the Vanderpoel family, according to Rhoads.

William Morris’ firm — Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co. — created this stained glass window for Trinity Episcopal Church.

This panel from the William Morris window depicts a scene from Jesus Christ’s life.

Slowly walking the church’s interior with congregation member Linda Adorno, I was struck by the various other furnishings and features that are intact from the 19th century, which she pointed out, particularly how much remains from the work Potter had done. The church’s slender lectern is one such piece, with four carved wooden embedded figures that represent the evangelists – Matthew as a winged man, Luke as a winged ox, Mark as a winged lion, and John as an eagle. A stone wall tablet memorializes the church’s co-founders Henry and Catherine Barclay, and John Watts Kearny, who died within several weeks of each other, in December 1850 and January 1851.

St. Mark as a winged lion, a detail of the church’s lectern, with carvings that show the four evangelists in varied images

Adorno has been a Trinity Episcopal member for 44 years, since moving to Saugerties in 1978, and is a member of the Vestry. In the parish hall, Adorno brings out a scrapbook showing families sharing in the festive gathering for the 175th anniversary some 16 years ago. In talking with her as we walk the church and the grounds, and with Stephen Shafer, the church Warden, I sense the pride each takes in the church as well as their commitment to it and to its continuing community presence into the future.

The parish hall contains another treasured facet of the church property – a set of Tiffany-style windows. Rudolph Geissler of the New York firm Lederle and Geissler executed the triptych. The Overbagh family donated the windows in 1922 in memory of a son who had died, John C. Overbagh. The main window’s scene of the blue-green mountains against a variegated sky, framed by purple irises in front and a brook running through the center flanked by two trees. It corresponds perfectly with the church property’s serene setting that affords a view, from the back portion, of the Catskill Mountains horizon in the distance.

The Tiffany-style windows in the church’s parish hall

To maintain and keep up repairs on an 1831 church and the other buildings on the property is highly demanding, in cost and time, for a parish with a committed though smaller congregation than the prior century. Yet Trinity Episcopal Church has been a resilient presence in Saugerties for nearly 200 years.

In its annual Open House weekend, the New York Landmarks Conservancy aims to highlight diverse ecclesiastical places such as Trinity Episcopal as not only historically significant, picturesque, and treasured sites but congregations that continue to serve their communities in the 21st century. The Saugerties parish is active in the community and seeks in the present day to be an inclusive congregation. Parishioners and the church’s clergy in recent years have worked to ameliorate hunger, help those in financial need, and join in social justice causes, as the church’s Web site states. During the Covid pandemic, for instance, Trinity Episcopal has donated significant funds to local and Ulster County hunger relief and resilience programs.

To remain vital, the parish is also working with the Episcopal Diocese on initiatives to enhance community and draw new congregants. As Trinity Episcopal approaches two centuries, it’s crucial to look to the future as well as to honor the past. As Adorno summed up its stance to be an inclusive congregation, “In other to be a growing church, you have to be welcoming to all.”

The scenic view of the Catskill Mountains from the rear grounds of Trinity Episcopal Church

Another close-up of the Morris window shows its vivid colors and expressive faces, in a scene from Christ’s life