In January 1830, Nahum Ward published an advertisement in the Marietta Intelligencer seeking to find other friends of liberal religion, and the resulting group organized as a Unitarian church in the following month.

The original form of the congregation ceased to exist in May 1869 at its merger with the city's Universalist church, which itself had been founded in 1817 but suffered severe damage to its property in an 1860 flood.

The building's general shape is that of a front-gable rectangle, with small-size crenellations atop the edges, and the Gothic Revival style is typified by the ogive windows and doorways in the facade and side.

Both stonework and brickwork were completed by local craftsmen, the bricks being made from clay extracted from Sacra Via, the ceremonial walls built by the Mound Builders near the edge of the Muskingum River.

[4] In October 1973, the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying both because of its architecture and its close connection to Nahum Ward, who was deemed a significant resident of nineteenth-century Marietta.