Church of St. Ann & the Holy Trinity, July 10, 1958.

The Church of the Holy Trinity (as it was first known) is one of the masterpieces of Gothic Revival style in 19th century American ecclesiastical architecture. Minard Lafever's elaborate interior features a soaring nave with wood-frame plaster vaults, and more than 7,000 square feet of stained glass by William Jay Bolton. Today, Bolton’s organ loft window is on permanent exhibition in the American Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Lafever was commissioned by Edgar Bartow, a wealthy merchant who wanted to build the finest church in either Brooklyn or New York City. Bartow purchased eight lots from Hezekiah Pierrepont at the highest point of Brooklyn Heights. Construction began in 1847; when the church opened in 1848, it was the largest structure in Brooklyn. When the tower and spire were finished in 1867, it was, at 295 feet, the tallest building in either Brooklyn or Manhattan, beating Wall Street’s Trinity Church by 15 feet. The spire was taken down in 1906 due to structural instability.

The Church of the Holy Trinity was the scene of a bitter McCarthy-era struggle. Rector John Melish and his son, Assistant Rector Howard Melish, were political progressives advocating for civil rights and for peaceful co-existence between the United States and the Soviet Union. Howard Melish chaired the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship, a target of Senator Joseph P. McCarthy's anti-Communist campaign. In 1949, the Church Vestry tried to oust the Melishes, whereupon the congregation voted 261 to 27 to remove the Vestry, which then sued to enjoin the congregation. In 1957, after a decade of struggle, the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island closed the church.

The church stood vacant until 1969 when St. Ann’s parish, the oldest Episcopal congregation in Brooklyn, decided to relocate into the building from its church on nearby Livingston Street. In honor of the building’s origin, the parish took the new name, St. Ann & the Holy Trinity. In the intervening decade since its closure, the church had deteriorated severely. To assist in addressing the grave disrepair, the nonprofit St. Ann’s Center for Restoration and the Arts was established in 1983. During its residency at the church, it was instrumental in, among other things, stabilizing and/or restoring portions of the exterior, the facade, nave roof, and, notably, a majority of the Bolton stained glass windows, even as it successfully established its own performing arts program. Relocated to DUMBO in 2000, it is now known as St. Ann’s Warehouse.