See more photos in the Summers of Love slideshow.

The Tet Offensive. Women’s liberation. The Civil Rights Act. In 1968, the nation and the world were caught up in a fever of revolution—but on the surface, the upheaval hadn’t reached Lower Manhattan. The World Trade Center was rising for the first time, built by hard hats with a reputation for conservative politics. Wall Street, still securely in the Mad Men era, was coasting through the longest period without a recession in American history. 

Late in 1968, Don Woodward, Trinity’s vicar, hired Father Jack Moody as Associate for Community and Cultural Affairs. Moody was a veteran parish priest who had come to New York to pursue an M.F.A. in painting and sculpture at New York University.

“When Don Woodard came on, he realized there was a whole weekday community on Wall Street that Trinity had reached out to in terms of more traditional worship, preaching, some noonday concerts,” Moody said recently. “Don knew what I was interested in: the role of arts in community change.”

Working closely with Dr. Larry King, organist and director of music, Moody developed an arts program aimed at engaging the Lower Manhattan workforce. “At that time there was a big drug problem on Wall Street, particularly in the back office. This is before the day of automation—everything was done by people. Don Woodard really felt a need to reach out in a creative way, to build community that would be more involving of people than the work ghettos in which they found themselves.”

See more photos in the Summers of Love slideshow.

Inspired by the downtown arts movement, Moody created a Summer Festival. For twelve weeks, the church and churchyard were filled with musicians, dancers, actors, and painters every weekday from 12-2pm. There were poetry readings, a graffiti board, and a “paint-in.”

“Trinity was looked to as a place of refreshment and celebration,” Moody explained. “Our hope was always that if we could reach out to workers and begin to create an experience that not only had some quality but had a sense of celebration behind it, then the community could have a real entrée to talk to leadership.”

The Summer Festival was wildly successful. Photos from the time show a packed churchyard, and the media took notice of the groovy gatherings.

“The first year we had a rock group come in for a mass, in the church,” Moody said. “It was actually covered on The Huntley-Brinkley Report. And I think it was David Brinkley who said, ‘Goodnight, Chet. Well, this is how it is on Wall Street this week,’ then it ends with this huge, huge big rendition of a rock song that was being played in Trinity and place was packed. Well, that didn’t set too well with the establishment, not only within Trinity but within Wall Street establishment.”

In the autumn of 1969, building on the momentum of the Summer Festival, Moody and his colleagues opened 74 Below, a coffeehouse in the basement of 74 Trinity Place. 74 Below offered 25-cent sandwiches, arts programming, and a chance for workers to connect at lunch. A photography club was formed.

“Our whole idea was to try to demonstrate and be who and what we say and think we are,” Moody explained, “The arts tried to create a sense of community, celebration, acceptance, and inclusion.”

Another outgrowth of the Summer Festival was the “Sunday Service on Friday,” which was bring-your-own-instrument and offered “coffee and sandwiches in Exhibition Room for starving and/or wealthy musicians.”

The Summer Festival was repeated for the next four years and continued to commission music, theatre, and dance. The Festival drew high-profile artists, including the original cast of Godspell, who lead a mass. Moody, who served as celebrant, remembers, “The Jesus figure in the Godspell cast, when it came time for the kiss of peace, came and embraced me, and the cast all went out into the congregation for the peace. The writer [of Godspell], John-Michael Tebelak, was at that mass and he received the Eucharist. He said it was the first time he’d done it in years. It was amazing. Those things lift us up and push us on.”

Despite Trinity’s community-building work, violent protest shook the Financial District in 1970. The invasion of Cambodia and subsequent shootings at Kent State unleashed a wave of student strikes and protests. Peace demonstrations made their way up Broadway nearly every noon. Demonstrators regularly clashed with “hard hats,” the blue collar construction workers and longshoremen building the WTC.

“Trinity was open to the situation—by that I mean we tried to minister to the situation as we saw it,” Moody explained, “I remember that we would stand on the front porch as the confrontational demonstrations were going by the church. And the vicar would be there and the staff would be there and we were there ready to reach out in any way we could. And also we wanted to protect the church, we didn’t know if people were going to storm it. And I remember there were two hard hats who would stand with us, with their construction helmets on, because they were sympathetic to what we were trying to do.”

Trinity also hosted a first aid center, set up in what is now the museum and staffed with students from New York University Medical Center. At the height of the demonstrations the center treated 60 people a day, many with minor injuries from cinder blocks and other tools wielded by “hard hats.” A Parish Newsletter article reported:

“I happened to be celebrant on that Friday,” Moody recalled, “And as I was celebrating, the first of the wounded were brought in to church and down the side aisle and back to the sacristy. It was one of the most moving scenes I ever experienced in my life.”

Trinity remained open to all that afternoon, with refreshments, first aid, and clergy standing by.

The church’s image—and the church itself—was transformed by the creativity and tumult of those years.

As a Mr. Vecsey wrote in a published letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal:

The summer program in ‘Old Trinity’ is truly inspired. All of a sudden this stately edifice in the financial are has become an oasis to a very wide group of people who seek a half hour or so of the human touch whether it be rock of sublime music from the great organ.

And once there, regardless of individual beliefs, there is a feeling of the Spirit that put Trinity there in the first place.