Christ Church was established in 1795, one of two congregations envisioned for Washington Parish, created by an act of the Maryland General Assembly in 1794.

The present structure was built in 1807, the first Episcopal church in the original city of Washington, on land given by William Prout.

[5] Services connected to St. John's Broad Creek were held in a renovated tobacco barn on Capitol Hill, possibly as early as the 1780s.

After that group, including Samuel Blodgett, Uriah Forrest, Benjamin Stoddert, William Deakins, and Anthony Addison, failed to make progress,[7] the bishop pressed on to the Maryland legislature.

[11] The first vestry, prominent local land owners, speculators, businessmen, and local politicians William Deakins, Jr., John Templeman, Charles Worthington, James Simmons, Joseph Clarke, Thomas Johnson, Jr., and Gustavus Scott, appointed Henry Edwards as registrar, and elected Clotworthy Stevenson and William Prentiss as wardens for one year.

In the following year, Thomas Law, General Davidson, and John Crocker were appointed to take the places of Johnson, Clarke, and Simmons, who had left the parish.

[12] Few parish records of this first decade survive, but other sources document that worship services were held in the converted tobacco barn and in the hallway of the War Office on Sunday afternoons.

The fire was started by Mordecai Booth, another Christ Church vestryman, under orders of Tingey, Commander of the Navy Yard, to prevent the British from capturing a valuable foothold in the nation's capital.

[21] As the communities around the Capitol and the Navy Yard grew, so did Christ Church, expanding its physical structure in the first of many renovations in 1824.

The boundaries of Washington Parish, which had encompassed the original City of Washington and Georgetown, began to contract as new churches formed and parish boundaries were set for them:[nb 3] St. John's Georgetown in 1809,[24] St. John's Lafayette Square in 1816, Trinity Church in 1827 (demolished 1936), Epiphany in 1844, and Ascension in 1845.

[nb 4] Christ Church allowed African Americans to be buried in its cemetery but not in the original enclosed portion of the burial ground.

[16] If hard use during the war battered Capitol Hill's roads and existing buildings, it also brought new residences, schools and military and civic buildings, and the local population grew after the 1883 Pendelton Civil Service Reform Act gave federal workers greater job security and regular wages.

[32][33] The best known Christ Church member is John Philip Sousa, the famous March King and head of the Marine Corps Band from 1880-1892.

[34] Sousa referred to Christ Church in a novel he wrote set in the Pipetown neighborhood east of the Marine Barracks.

[39][40] The neighborhood was relatively stable during the first half of the 20th century, even during the Depression, in part on the strength of federal government employment, particularly in the Navy Yard.

[44][45][46] In the 1920s, the church had the resources to undertake a major interior redesign, changing the look from heavy Victorian ornamentation to imitation stone, more in keeping with the neo-Gothic appearance of the exterior.

[52] When Gabler left, the congregation had remained relatively stable in size for 50 years,[53][54] but the neighborhood was starting to show signs of stress and disrepair.

[59] In the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision desegregating D.C. public schools (Bolling v. Sharpe), racial demographic shifts across the city accelerated,[60] and the Rev.

Donald A. Seaton, called as rector in 1965, advocated efforts to attract young people and foster racial integration.

It was led by Bessie Wood Cramer, the parish's first female vestry member, who had been responsible for managing D.C. public school desegregation in the 1950s.

[66] Capitol Hill Arts Workshop began a long relationship with Christ Church in 1972, holding many classes and staging shows in the parish hall until it secured dedicated space at 7th and G Streets, SE, in the early 1980s.

The U.S. Marine Band presented a concert on the lawn, G Street was closed to traffic, and an Interior Department official added Christ Church to the National Register of Historic Places.

[68][69] Picketers stood just outside the church fence, protesting the presence of General William Westmoreland, a commander of American forces in Vietnam, who had been invited along with other dignitaries.

The design has been incorrectly attributed to Benjamin Latrobe, architect of the Capitol and innumerable other buildings in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.

In the early years of the Episcopal Church, individuals seeking ordination did not always go to theological schools but often studied under the direction of a Bishop or other clergy.