Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church was organized in January 1896. The church members met in the Seventh Day Adventist Church on the corner of 12th and Hill (now Broadway & Mapleton). They were able to purchase this building, “the little white church,” in January 1900 for $1600. This small building was able to hold 200 people. The congregation knew it was time to search for a new home when the little white church’s capacity became regularly exceeded.

The Glen H. Huntington architectural firm was contracted in 1927 to design a new church building. The lead architect, Margaret Read, was one of few female architects at the time and designed the building in a Gothic Revival style. According to the Daily Camera, Read designed many homes, sorority and fraternity houses in the University Hill neighborhood. Land was purchased from the University of Colorado on the corner of Broadway and Pine for $10,000. Ground was broken for the new church on April 19, 1929 and was dedicated in December 1929. This construction came in at a cost of $36,000. This older part of the church, now called the Chapel of the Resurrection, was unanimously approved for landmark status by the Boulder City Council in 2016.

At the end of WWII, Boulder was booming. By the mid 1950’s Trinity had once again outgrown its facility and needed more space. In 1964, Hobart D. Wager and Associates designed the present sanctuary that was completed in 1967. The altar, cross, baptismal font and front doors were designed and built by William Morton, a member of Trinity.

The faith community found itself requiring more space as Boulder’s continued growth stretched Trinity’s space. In September 1989 an addition including a new narthex was built along the north side of the building and outside the existing sanctuary.  The Chapel of the Resurrection (Trinity’s original sanctuary built in 1929) was also restored to a Chapel to be used for smaller church services, education, and smaller concerts.

Today, Trinity is an exciting, dynamic congregation. Following a mission statement to be a “mission outpost in a troubled world,” the congregation felt led by God to build downtown Boulder affordable senior housing, a multipurpose building for mission, ministry, and fellowship, and worked with the City of Boulder to provide parking spaces for congregants and the public at large. The congregation joyfully broke ground in May 2016 to develop on the site of the church’s former parking lot. The Trinity Horizons Project, the building on the north side of Trinity’s campus, was completed in December 2018 and serves the greater Boulder community.