pastor in 1873 (while at Bond St.) and later played an instrumental role in founding the Toronto Baptist College (later McMaster) serving as its first President and Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics. Benjamin Daniel Thomas (1843–1917) served from October 1881 to July 1903 and was once referred to as "the best-loved Baptist minister in Canada." Henry Francis Perry (1861–?) served from 1903 to 1909, leaving for a pastorate at First Baptist Church Vancouver, British Columbia. During his pastorate he also taught at McMaster. He was followed by Thomas Todhunter Shields who held the pastorate from 1910 until his death in 1955. It was during Shields' tenure that a disastrous fire severely damaged the building in 1938. Shields supervised the rebuilding and insisted that the new spire be an exact replica of the old one. A list of pastors: 1818–1820 Alexander Stewart 1826–1836 Alexander Stewart 1840–1841 W.H. Coombs 1842–1844 James Campbell 1844–1848 Robert Alexander Fyfe 1848–1855 James Pyper 1855–1860 Robert Alexander Fyfe 1860–1869 Thomas Ford Caldicott 1869–1872 William Stewart 1873–1881 John Harvard Castle 1882–1903 Benjamin Daniel Thomas 1903–1909 H. Francis Perry 1910–1955 Thomas Todhunter Shields 1955–1974 Harold C. Slade 1975–1981 Eric T. Gurr 1981–1982 John R. Boyd 1982–1993 Norman H. Street 1994–1997 Daniel Lundy 1998–present Glendon G. Thompson Notable Members Alexander Mackenzie (politician) William McMaster William Kirkpatrick McNaught Samuel Platt Architecture The Jarvis Street Baptist Church was designed in the Gothic Revival style by the architectural firm of Henry Langley and Edmund Burke who served for many years at Jarvis Street Baptist Church as a Sunday-school teacher, chair of the choir committee, and deacon. It was one of the first churches in Canada to be built with an amphitheatre-shaped interior. The ground floor seating is grouped in a semicircle, while the gallery above is horseshoe shaped. The main façade of the building is made out brown stone that is obtained from the regions of Queenstown. The stone is laid unevenly with a pattern that varies in different shades of browns and dark yellows. The material used for the roof is Canadian slate. The roof is constructed from a series of pitched segments that are centrally connected by a horizontally sliced dome. There are eight entrances, each consisting of solid oak double doors framed with pointed sandstone arches. Several of these doors have been blocked off with black cast iron gates. Triangular sets of small rosette windows are placed above