In 1899, First Finnish Lutheran Church was founded on 50 Belcher Street, in what then was considered part of the Eureka Valley district of San Francisco, but what is located on the outskirts of what today is best known as the Castro District.

[4] During the April 18, 1906, San Francisco earthquake and its aftermath, the parsonage served as a feeding station and hospital.

The church was built in the heart of what was then the Nordic-dominated Duboce-Market neighborhood of San Francisco.

The brick and wood frame of the St. Francis Lutheran Church building survived the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and then was used for several months as an infirmary.

[6] 66 years before the erection of St. Francis Lutheran Church, the very first Protestant church on the Pacific Coast was erected by Finns and Swedes and other Lutherans who worked for the Russian-American Company, which was established in 1802.