The congregation was established around 1882 with 194 members that had broken from the Washington Avenue Baptist Church (Brooklyn, New York).

The Emmanuel congregation commissioned architect E. L. Roberts, the architect of the Washington Avenue Baptist Church, to build them a small, Gothic-style, two-story interim chapel on St. James Place (1882–1883)."

It was paid for by Charles Pratt and built in 1887 to designs by architect Francis H. Kimball in the Gothic Revival style "as a synthesis of the cathedral type and the Baptist preaching church."

Architectural critic Montgomery Schuyler praised it as "a very rich scholarly and well considered design."

The most conspicuous design feature of the interior was the central font.