Nast Trinity United Methodist Church - Architecture

Architecture

Located in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, the church building is a stone structure with brick elements, built on a stone foundation and covered with a slate roof. Two-and-a-half stories tall, the church features a prominent front gable with a grand tympanum created in the Norman style. Numerous courses of undressed stone appear on the exterior, which is furthermore distinguished by a semi-Palladian window, an elaborate Romanesque Revival arch, multiple small circular windows, and small porches on both sides of the facade.

By choosing Samuel Hannaford (who was a member of the Winton Place Methodist Episcopal Church in the village of Winton Place) to design their new structure in 1881, Nast Methodist Episcopal Church selected one of Cincinnati's most prominent architects. Having completed the grand Cincinnati Music Hall in the 1870s, Hannaford was at the pinnacle of his career in the early 1880s. At this time, Cincinnati was experiencing significant growth, and Hannaford's services were in demand throughout the city and its suburbs. Many other churches in the region commissioned buildings from Hannaford during this period of his life; more than a dozen survive today, and nearly all of these structures feature walls of ashlar with undressed exteriors, like that of Nast Trinity. Conversely, few of these church buildings are designed in the conventional Romanesque Revival style of Nast Trinity; the majority are Gothic Revival buildings, and several others are examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Such a variation in styles was not restricted to religious buildings; as popular tastes changed, Hannaford willingly employed a wide range of architectural styles in all types of buildings.