Development of the Episcopal Church in Davenport The Episcopal Church can trace its beginnings in
Scott County to services held in 1837 by the
Rt. Rev. Philander Chase, Bishop of Illinois. The services were held in the hotel at Rockingham, which is now the southwest section of Davenport. In 1841 the Rev. Zachariah Goldsmith of Virginia was appointed missionary to Davenport by the Domestic Committee of the Board of Missions of the
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States. On October 14, 1841, Trinity Church was organized in Davenport. The congregation originally worshiped in the home of Dr. John Emerson on Second Street. He owned the slave
Dred Scott, who lived with him in Davenport. A small frame church was built on the corner of Fourth and Main streets. In 1853 the congregation erected a stone building at the corner of Fifth and Rock Island (now Pershing) streets. The building was built in the
Gothic style and included a
rose window. It is the first church in Iowa to have a
pipe organ.
Diocese of Iowa The Rt. Rev.
Jackson Kemper, the missionary bishop of the Northwest, invited the clergy and representatives of the congregations of the state of Iowa to a meeting on August 17, 1853, at
Trinity Church in
Muscatine. In the absence of the bishop, the Rev. Alfred Louderbeck of Trinity Church in Davenport was elected the chairman. At this gathering, the constitutions and canons for the new Diocese of Iowa were adopted, and plans were made for the election of a bishop. The General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America admitted the Diocese of Iowa to its membership on October 7–8, 1853. On May 31, 1854, the first convention of the Diocese of Iowa began at Trinity Church in Davenport. During the convention, the Rev.
Henry Washington Lee, rector of St. Luke's Church in
Rochester, New York, was elected bishop. He was consecrated on October 18, 1854, in his church in Rochester. Through the generosity of people from the eastern United States, Bishop Lee purchased land as an investment for the new diocese. From the sale of this property a bishop's residence was built, and the diocese also had an endowment of $53,000. The Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in
Chicago was the first Episcopal cathedral in the country. It had not been built as a cathedral, however. The diocese acquired the Church of the Atonement in 1861, which was deep in debt and about to default, and it was renamed. The
Cathedral of Our Merciful Saviour in
Faribault, Minnesota, which had been consecrated in 1869 by Bishop Kemper, was the first church built as a cathedral. Bishop Lee began planning for the bishop's church after he received a gift of $30,000 from David J. Ely of Chicago in memory of his daughter, Sarah Ely Parsons, for the expressed purpose of building a cathedral. It is a
basilica-plan church with a rounded
apse on its east side. There is a small vestry on the north side and a small vestibule on the west side. The structure is four bays long, and its main
façade is three bays wide. Each of the side bays is divided by
buttresses that frame three attached
lancet windows. They are also denoted on the steep pitched
gabled roof by a single
dormer. The roof itself is divided into two pitches with an uninterrupted band of
clerestory widows, which are high. On September 24, 1884,
St. Katherine's Hall opened to both day and boarding students. In 1902 the Sisters of Mary took over the administration and teaching responsibilities at the school. In the years following, the school expanded with the addition of a chapel and academic buildings. The Renwick mansion was added to the facility in 1907. In 1968 the school ended its boarding program and admitted boys. The name was changed to St. Katherine and St. Mark to reflect this change. In 1973, the school moved to the former home of
Joseph Bettendorf in
Bettendorf, Iowa, and in 1980 it amicably broke its ties with the Episcopal Church. In 2001, the school changed its name to
Rivermont Collegiate. In 1884 the trustees of Griswold College began planning a school for boys. They built a structure opposite the cathedral on Main Street, and it opened in September 1886 as Kemper Hall, named for the missionary bishop. It closed for lack of funds in December 1895. The building was sold to the public school district, and it remains on the
Central High School campus. In 1893
St. Luke's Hospital was founded at the corner of Eighth and Main streets in Davenport and moved to its Rusholme Street location in 1914. In 1993, one hundred years after its founding, a merger was announced between St. Luke's and Mercy Hospital in Davenport, and the consolidated hospital opened in 1994 as
Genesis Health System.
Trinity Cathedral Trinity Church moved to a new stone building on the southwest corner of Brady and Seventh streets because its old church had been destroyed in a fire in 1874. The new building, like the old, was a stone structure in the Gothic Revival style. It was designed by Davenport architect
Edward Hammatt, who designed Kemper Hall and another building on the Griswold College campus around the same time. It was built through the generosity of Clarissa Cook, an early benefactor to charitable organizations in Davenport and the Episcopal Church. She built the new church in memory of her husband, Ebenezer Cook, who had served on the
vestry at Trinity for 30 years. It was used in later years as the dean's house. The house is a 2½-story structure that features side gables with end
parapets and a two-story wing in the back. It is a frame and tile structure with stone facing on the exterior. While plain in appearance, its grey-tan exterior and vaguely
Tudor Gothic style is in keeping with the color scheme and architectural theme of the rest of the Trinity complex. In contrast, the building that it replaced was an
Italianate structure. Christ Church, which had been established in 1864, had a small frame church building at the corner of Third and Pine streets in the west end. It merged with Trinity Cathedral in 1928. Several changes occurred in the second half of the twentieth century. The 1960s saw changes for the Trinity congregation with the establishment of two new churches in the Iowa
Quad Cities. St. Alban's Church was organized in 1960 in northwest Davenport, and in 1966 St. Peter's Church was established in Bettendorf. In 1988 Trinity's dean, the Very Rev.
Edward Harding MacBurney, was elected the seventh
bishop of Quincy. The status of Trinity Cathedral was changed in the 1990s. During the episcopate of the Rt. Rev.
Elwood Lindsay Haines (1944–1949) the bishop's residence and the diocesan headquarters were moved to
Des Moines. In 1992, when the Rt. Rev
C. Christopher Epting was the bishop, the diocese announced that
St. Paul's Church in Des Moines would become the liturgical cathedral for the diocese. Trinity would be maintained as the diocese's historical cathedral. In 2010 Bishop Epting, now retired, became the interim dean at Trinity. The Clarissa C. Cook Parish House, which had been built in 1917, began to deteriorate and had to be replaced. A fund drive in the parish raised two million dollars, and the new structure was completed in 1993. The building, designed to complement the cathedral, contains a Great Hall, kitchen facilities, parish offices, classroom space, children's chapel, and a larger octagon-shaped chapel. It is connected to the cathedral by two cloister walks. In the middle is a
garth, or outdoor garden. It was named the Haines Parish House after the largest donor, Elizabeth Haines. Ms. Haines also desired to fulfill the original plans for the cathedral. In 1998 she donated all the funds necessary to complete the cathedral's bell tower and spire. Potter's original plans called for a stone spire, but one covered in metal was erected instead. One hundred and thirty-one years after the cornerstone was laid by Bishop Lee, the cathedral was completed. ==Pipe organ==