Trinity Cathedral anchors this block of Downtown Omaha. This is Nebraska’s first Episcopal parish, begun when the Right Reverend David Jackson Kemper organized Trinity on July 13, 1856, and later designated the state’s first Episcopal cathedral in 1872. You’re looking at a building designed by English architect Henry G. Harrison in 1880, whose construction was set in motion when the Right Reverend Robert Harper Clarkson broke ground and laid the cornerstone on May 25, 1880; the cathedral was consecrated on November 15, 1883 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
The congregation’s story is layered: the first church stood at South Ninth and Farnam Streets, the congregation lost control of that building in 1864, a second building burned in 1868, and a third was built the next year and used until this cathedral rose. In recent years the cathedral reported 509 members in 2023, with no membership statistics in the 2024 parochial reports; plate and pledge income in 2024 was $393,131 with an average Sunday attendance (ASA) of 116. Notice that English architect Henry G. Harrison's 1880 design was consecrated as a cathedral in 1883.