 In the 1850s the Rector's wife Mrs. William Richmond transformed the John McVickar house, formerly the center of a sixty-acre estate south of St. Michael's, for a Protestant Episcopal "home for abandoned women who found no hand outstretched to help them".The third and current building, influenced by the Romanesque and Byzantine styles and designed to seat 1,500 people, was dedicated in December, 1891.The church stands on ground formerly used as a cemetery.