Through the ministry and influence of its most significant rector, Archibald Campbell Knowles (1865-1961), St. Alban's was considered a major Anglo-Catholic parish of the American Protestant Episcopal Church.

The cornerstone for the congregation's second building was laid on January 24, 1915, and it was consecrated on June 20, 1915 by Bishop Reginald Heber Weller of the Episcopal Diocese of Fond du Lac.

Its architect was George T. Pearson in the Philadelphia firm of Sloan & Hutton; his other work includes St. Luke's, Germantown, Market Square Presbyterian Church in Germantown (dissolved 1995), buildings at the Philadelphia Cricket Club, college buildings throughout the United States, and several railroad stations and hotels in Virginia.

A substantial group of mission congregants protested Knowles' election as rector in 1906 "because we are informed and so believe that the sole purpose thereof is to [...] fasten upon said church his absolute rule in spiritual and temporal matters and his extreme ritualistic mode of worship."

Most of the windows, altars, and furnishings of the church (itself constructed as a memorial to Knowles' parents) were in the names of his family members, or in thanksgiving for anniversaries in his ordained ministry.