Trinity School

 school, Richardsonian Romanesque (architecture)

4-story Richardsonian Romanesque-style school originally completed in 1892 as a parish house for the St. Agnes Chapel. Designed by William A. Potter, it now houses the Trinity School's lower school language labs, the Middle School's science labs, and the Morse Theater. The original Trinity School building was completed two years later, to the west; that building now houses the Lower School.

The parish house was originally part of a complex built by Trinity Parish, consisting of a chapel, clergy house, and parish house; the parish house became part of the Trinity School in the early 1940s, and is the only remaining building of the chapel complex. Potter's design for St. Agnes Chapel placed the cruciform church on a north-south axis with its entrance on West 92nd Street. The clergy and parish houses were joined to the church, flanked its apse to the east and west, and had main entrances on West 91st Street. The parish house was considered unusually large.

The parish house retains a simplicity of form. A blocky, 3-story structure with a northeastern extension and chimney, it was originally topped by a steeply pitched roof with twin cupolas. The simple, massive form, together with the combination of rough-faced brownstone and light-brown granite in alternating wide and narrow courses, the use of rough faced stone, tall or massive round-arched openings, deeply-set windows, and a massive roof form reveal the Richardsonian influence.

A typical window treatment is carried throughout the structure. Double-hung windows, generally grouped in sets of three, are all trimmed in brownstone and deeply set in their openings. The roof line is marked by gabled dormer windows, and the steeply pitched sides of the roof now rise to a flat deck. The West 91st Street facade contains the original entrance to the building, which is no longer functional, but consists of a deep round-arched portal flanked by sets of four colonnettes on stone plinths with brownstone capitals and foliate detail. The basement windows each have separate areaways, enclosed by black iron fencing.