The American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, America's Episcopal/Anglican church in Paris, has served the American community since the 1830s when services were organized in the garden pavillion of the Hotel Matignon, the home of Colonel Herman Thorn, (now the official residence of the French Prime Minister). A parish was formally established in 1859 and the first church building consecrated in 1864 on Rue Bayard.

In the 1870s, Dr. John B. Morgan, a cousin of J. P. Morgan, became Rector of Holy Trinity Parish and began a successful fund raising campaign for a new and larger church. The present site was purchased on Avenue George V (then called Avenue d'Alma) from the estate of the Duc de Morny, half-brother of Emperor Napoléon III, and the church was built in less than four years; the plans submitted by the English architect George Edmund Street were approved by the vestry in October, 1882 and the first services held in September, 1886.

The church was consecrated on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1886, coinciding with the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in New York, thus reinforcing both our French and American alliances. In 1922, Holy Trinity became a cathedral, technically a pro-cathedral, in that it continues as a parish church and also serves as the seat for the Bishop in charge of Episcopal churches in Europe.

ANECDOTES
The Cathedral has played a role, sometimes major, in the life of France and of Paris in particular. When the Empress Eugénie fled to Paris she turned to her American dentist, Dr. Thomas Evans, a member of the church, who engineered her escape to England.

Edith Wharton's father, George Frederic Jones, was a founding member of the parish and a member of the vestry. Dean Beekman performed Ms. Wharton's funeral service in 1937.

John Singer Sargeant was confirmed in the church.

James Gordon Bennett, Jr., publisher of The New York Herald and of its Paris edition, was married here in 1914.

Among the parish women to volunteer for the ambulance corps during World War I was Margaret Benedict, whose mother was reputed to be the creator of Eggs Benedict.

During World War II, the Cathedral was appropriated by German troops for use as their Protestant church. With the liberation of Paris in 1944, the Cathedral became the official church of American troops and in a gesture of defiance, Cathedral organist Lawrence Whipp, who himself had been interned for a year in a German camp as a prisoner of war, played a Mendelssohn sonata as the postlude at the service marking the liberation. Mendelssohn's music, considered "Jewish music" by the Nazis, had been forbidden during the occupation.

Gertrude Stein's funeral was held in the cathedral in 1946.

The parish of the Holy Trinity in Paris was founded by the affluent expatriate American community of the 19th century — Vanderbilts, Drexels, Roosevelts, Harrimans, Belmonts, Biddles and Riggses. An early 20th century parish record shows a duchess, a princess, two marquises, two countesses, a viscountess and a baroness as members, all Americans who had married royalty. Nonetheless, since its inception it has been involved in the life of all Americans and Anglophones living in Paris. In the late 19th century the parish founded a ministry for students and artists on the Left Bank in the famous Rue de la Grande Chaumière. After World War I, the rector, Dr. Frederick Beekman, was instrumental in the creation of the American Hospital. In the 1930s, the American Students' and Artists' Center opened on Boulevard Raspail, an address remembered affectionately by Americans and French alike for presenting the freshness and innovativeness of American culture.