25 years on from 9/11: Firefighters and volunteers took solace from 'little chapel that stood' among ruins

Firefighters, police officers and volunteers found food, rest, prayer and companionship at the Manhattan church beside Ground Zero

A worshiper kneels in St Paul's Chapel which served as a sanctuary for rescue workers after 9/11. Photo: Mario Tama/Getty

Fewer than 100 steps separates St Paul's Chapel from the Oculus, the shopping and transport hub which forms a striking entrance to the rebuilt World Trade Center.

But, shielded by the trees in the churchyard, the chapel, part of Trinity Church Wall Street, became one of the most important places of refuge and support in the aftermath of the attacks, suffering nearly no damage. Built between 1764 and 1766, it is Manhattan’s oldest surviving church structure and would become known as “The Little Chapel That Stood".

Fr Michael Bird, the vicar of Trinity Church, was a priest in New Canaan, Connecticut, a commuter town around an hour from Grand Central Station in the heart of Manhattan, and was offering pastoral care to the town's high school where he also served as a sports coach when the planes struck the towers.

Fr Bird would be one of more than 300 clergy who volunteered to cover the daily liturgy and to counsel first responders.

"People could volunteer side by side. They could be working together on the pile. But they could be together because it held them together and said, 'There's something deeply important here, right?'

"That God's intention is not destruction and us turning against one another. God's intention is love, and for us to find one another and to find community. St Paul's holds that. And when I run into people who were there during the weeks afterwards, that's what they talk about.

"This amazing moment where they were broken, but someone sat with them in their brokenness. Some person took their time to sit at the piano, or to play a violin or a guitar, and put music into a space, or fed them, or gave them new boots.

This article is part of Paul Hosford's special report on the 25th anniversary of 9/11 published by the 'Irish Examiner' in print and online on Friday and Saturday, September 11 & 12, 2026

For many firefighters, police officers, construction workers and volunteers, St Paul’s offered something just as important as practical assistance: somewhere to escape the pile for a few minutes.

Workers could come inside, sit down, eat, sleep and pray. Chaplains and clergy offered spiritual support to people who had witnessed extraordinary death and destruction. The chapel therefore became a kind of sanctuary in the middle of the disaster zone.

The chapel also became a place of remembrance and a de facto memorial before there was one. Photographs, messages, badges, flags and personal objects left behind by responders turned it into a living museum.

"It's a place that has held people after deep, deeply difficult times, and also a place that I think, through its very walls, exudes hope in the possibility of healing and God's intention for unity, even among destruction. That, to me, is what it continues to do," says Fr Bird.