This week for Georgetown Time Machine, I’m checking out a photo of Georgetown Presbyterian Church from the DC Historical Society. It was taken around 1950 by John Wymer, who has an extensive collection of street shots from this period.
This is the same Presbyterian Church as currently stands on P St. But of course, this isn’t what the current church looks like. This is how the building looked when it was first constructed in 1873. And it reflected the Victorian style of the time. The facade was changed to the current federal style just five years after the photo in 1955. The current design is fine, but I wish they kept the old style.
The congregation itself is quite a bit older, dating to 1780. It was founded by Stephen Bloomer Balch. Its first chapel was built two years later and was the first protestant chapel in Georgetown. The congregation moved to its M St. building in 1821:
Fifty years later it moved to the P St. location of the first photo. The M St. chapel was demolished in 1878. Looking at its style you can see perhaps what the congregation was inspired by when it changed the P St. faced in the 1950s.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 
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