The church was built in 1801 in the Georgian style of architecture for the Zion English Lutheran Church.,[REF] a Lutheran congregation that subsequently converted en masse to the Protestant Episcopal Church.
The Episcopal congregation sold the building in 1853 to the Roman Catholic Church of the Immigrants parish, which had been founded in 1827 by the Rev. Felix Varela y Morales to minister to the poor Irish in the Five Points who were predominantly Roman Catholic [REF].