It was founded in 1859 as a chapel of ease of St. David's Episcopal Church in Manayunk, initially with a dedication to St. Peter.

The cornerstone for the church building was laid on September 15, 1860, and the church was consecrated by Bishop William Bacon Stevens on January 14, 1862, as his first official episcopal act, having himself been consecrated to the episcopate six days earlier.

Its architect was Alfred Byles, who also designed the Fifth Baptist Church at the corner of Eighteenth and Spring Garden in Philadelphia.

During the twentieth century, St. Alban's was nicknamed "Roxborough's Little Church Around the Corner," a reference to the Church of the Transfiguration in New York City as a small and uncharacteristically open parish.

The tracker action organ at St. Alban's is Hook & Hastings Opus 1750 from 1897.