In response to a call by George Fife Angas for a Baptist minister to found a new congregation in Adelaide, Rev.

Silas Mead emigrated aboard Parisian, arriving in July 1861.

[1] He began taking regular services at White's Rooms and soon his enthusiastic congregation decided to build a large church on Acre 273 in Flinders Street on the west corner of Divett Place.

[2] Robert G. Thomas, the architect who would later be responsible for the Stow Memorial Church (now Pilgrim Uniting Church), was selected to design the building, which is of Gothic revival style in bluestone and sandstone with elaborate capitals on the columns, a rose window and front entrance with three arches supported by pillars.

The debt was cleared the following year, Mead Hall was erected in 1867–1870, and the manse was built in 1877.