The church was built at this location because of the prominent commercial role that the Playa barrio played in the early nineteenth century.

For this reason the La Playa barrio also had fisheries, schools, hospitals, a cemetery, and a population of 5,169 distributed through a residential area dominated by wooden houses.

"The vital importance of the Port of Ponce explains why it was targeted as an early site for the missionary work of the new Protestant churches that came to Puerto Rico, immediately after the Spanish–American War of 1898.

In 1960, Reverend Julia Torres, born in La Playa, became the first woman in Puerto Rico to be ordained as a Methodist minister.

[8] The McCabe Memorial Church embodies the wide historic process of the establishment of the Protestant factions in Puerto Rico.