By 1836, Ca Ira could be described as a post village, with a population of 210; it had forty dwellings, three stores, a mill, a tobacco warehouse, two taverns, and a Masonic hall.

Even so, although Ca Ira had continued to rise in importance through the 1850s, at one point incorporating its first and only bank, by the postbellum years it had begun losing population, and shrank rapidly during the last decades of the nineteenth century.

The church was not spared, and was abandoned along with most other structures during this period; a 1906 entry in the Lippincott World Gazetteer mentioned its presence among a handful of other buildings, mainly shops.

The Society also blocked an attempt by the diocese to sell the property, and in 1954 reinstituted an annual series of "homecoming services" in continuation of a tradition begun in the 1930s.

Today, Grace Church is preserved in working order as a shrine of the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia; to keep its status as such, it is required to host at least one religious service yearly.

[4] Grace Church, Ca Ira, survives as a charming illustration of the stylistic hybridization that occurred with Romantic Revivalism in the antebellum period.

Unlike many of its similarly imaginative contemporaries, Grace Church is devoid of architectural naivete and is at once a skillful blending of Roman, Greek, and Gothic Revival elements, all executed with superb crnftsmanship.

Its temple form and fine brickwork are an offspring of Virginia's Jeffersonian tradition, while its Greek and Gothic details are adapted from builders' pattern books.

Entry to the gallery is achieved via an enclosed stairway on the east side; one wall is fitted with beaded diagonal paneling, and there is no stair rail.

Also remaining in the church are two wood-burning stoves, elaborate constructions in cast iron, bearing the maker's mark of "Leibrandt & McDowell, Philadelphia & Baltimore".

[1] There is a small cemetery attached to the church grounds, located at the back in a hilly, wooded area overlooking the Willis River.

[1] Grace Church is significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is its association with Dabney Cosby, and through him the Jeffersonian school of architectural thought so prevalent across Virginia in the second quarter of the nineteenth century.

The building stands as a well-preserved example of a rural Virginia church, incorporating elements of various architectural styles into its construction; it also serves as one of the last few tangible reminders, and much the best-preserved, of the once-thriving merchant community of Ca Ira.