A pioneering work of American Gothic Revival, the church served as an Episcopal parish from its construction in 1845 to its closure in 1975.

Through the work of its founder William Irwin Thompson and start-up grants from the Lilly Endowment and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the church became a cultural center in which Gary Snyder, Robert Bly, Wendell Berry, Samuel Menash, and Kathleen Raine gave poetry readings, Paul Winter and David Hykes gave concerts, Jerzy Grotowksi and Andre Gregory lectured on theatre, and philosophers such as Gregory Bateson, Francisco Varela, and Thompson himself gave the lectures that became their subsequent books.

Keith Critchlow and John Michel taught courses on sacred architecture, and representatives of world religions such as Nechung Rinpoche, Seyed Hosein Nasr, and Pir Vilayat Khan gave public presentations.

The parish subsequently sold the building to Odyssey House, a drug rehabilitation program, in order to meet its fiscal obligations.

[3][5] Odyssey House, in turn, sold the buildings to nightclub entrepreneur Peter Gatien, who opened the New York Limelight club there in 1983.

The church building during its time as the Limelight was the subject of the 1985 song "This Disco (Used to be a Cute Cathedral)" by singer Steve Taylor.