The builders were part of a movement among Baptists in the urban centers of Boston, Newport, New York, and Philadelphia to bring respectability and recognition to Baptists. Association with Brown University Central to the movement for greater recognition and growth was the creation of an educated ministry and the founding of a college. The Philadelphia Association of Baptist Churches sent Dr. James Manning to Rhode Island to found the college in the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (later renamed Brown University) in 1764. Beginning in Warren, the college then relocated to Providence in 1770. The college president, Manning, was called to be the pastor of the Providence church in 1771. During his ministry the present Meeting House was erected "for the publick worship of Almighty God and also for holding commencement in." Subsequent Brown presidents Jonathan Maxcy and Francis Wayland also served as ministers at the church. The Brown family that soon gave its name to the university were prominent members of the church, and descendants of its founders and those of the Rhode Island Colony (the second pastor of the congregation after Roger Williams was Chad Brown). Although the university is now secular, in honor of its history and tradition, the meetinghouse continues to be used, as it has been since 1776, as the site of Brown University's undergraduate commencement. Construction, alterations and designations Construction of the church began in the summer of 1774; at the time, the project was the largest building project ever attempted in New England. Due to the closure of the Massachusetts ports by the British as punishment for the Boston Tea Party, out-of-work ship builders and carpenters came to Providence to work on the meetinghouse. The main portion of the meetinghouse was dedicated in mid-May 1775, and the steeple erected in three and a half days in the first week of June. Notable additions to the meetinghouse have included a Waterford crystal chandelier given by Hope Brown Ives (1792), a large pipe organ given by her brother Nicholas Brown Jr., the younger (1834); the addition of rooms for Sunday school, a fellowship hall, and offices on the lower level (1819–59), and an addition to the east end of the meetinghouse to accommodate an indoor baptistery (1884). The 1884 addition included a large stained glass window that was soon deemed inappropriate and shuttered over. In 1957, John D. Rockefeller Jr. funded a restoration