For the first 30 years in the ‘new’ location on Hoskin Avenue, Trinity College’s chapel services were held in Seeley Hall, originally designed as the Library Reading Room. In 1953, work began on the present chapel; work was completed in 1955 and it was consecrated the same year on November 20 by the Most Reverend William Wright, Metropolitan of the Ecclesiastical Province of Ontario, with various Bishops, Archbishops, Provosts and the Governor-General in attendance. The chapel was a gift to the College from businessman Gerald Larkin, who orchestrated the substantial contribution of Canadian artists to the decorative features of the building.
The chapel was the last work of British architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1880-1960), whose other designs include Liverpool Cathedral, the Cambridge University Library, and the famous British red telephone boxes. The local architectural firm was George and Moorhouse. Gothic in its structure, the chapel is built of solid masonry with load-bearing walls carrying a self-sustaining vault rib system with intervening spaces of acoustic treatment. The design is a simplified perpendicular Gothic style and is not a copy of any existing building. Traditional construction methods were used by European craftsmen; the only steel is in the hidden girders supporting the slate roof. The main chapel extends 100 feet to the reredos and is 47 feet high at the vault bosses. The exterior is sandstone, the interior a combination of Indiana limestone support and stuccowork, while the floor is Roman travertine.
The collaboration between Sir Giles Scott and Gerald Larkin produced an ecclesiastic space that achieves a sense of harmony and unified effect. Great restraint has been shown in the unadorned masses between the windows, the nearly monochrome expanses of glass, the simplicity of the pews. This restraint allows for the joyful discovery of individual elements within the chapel, and it allows the full brilliance and impact of the light to be felt. Sir Giles Scott visited the Trinity College Chapel only after its completion, and pronounced himself satisfied.