The construction was begun in 1750 and is based on the ground plan of Gibbs' Marybone Chapel (later St. Peter's, Vere Street) in London, with later additions such as a larger tower.

During the French and Indian War (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War), the church was the site of the burials of two prominent Nova Scotians: Governor Charles Lawrence (d.1760) and Catholic Priest Pierre Maillard (d.1762), the latter ceremony was attended by a large number of Mi'kmaq people.

During the American Revolution the church held funerals for Francis McLean (d. 1781) who defended New Ireland (Maine) during the war; Capt Henry Francis Evans (d.1781) who died in the Naval Battle off Cape Breton (1781); Baron Oberst Franz Carl Erdmann von Seitz Hatchment (d.1782) who was the commander of the Hessian soldiers that defended Lunenburg in the Raid on Lunenburg (1782); and Governor Michael Francklin (d. 1782), whose funeral was also attended by a large number of Mi'kmaq people.

After the American Revolution, with the creation of the Diocese of Nova Scotia in 1787, St. Paul's was given the Bishop's seat, making it the first Anglican cathedral outside of Great Britain.

[7] The diocese included Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, St. Johns (now Prince Edward Island), and across Quebec and Ontario to Windsor, and Bermuda.

During the Halifax Explosion of 1917, a piece of wooden window frame from another building was lodged into the wall of St. Paul's Church, where it remains today.

All of whom exhibited their work at the Royal Academy of Arts and have their work in the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Tate, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts State House, Trafalgar Square, St Paul's Cathedral, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey.

Nixon was commissioned by the City of London to create a statue of King William IV (1844), which Gentleman's Magazine called "a masterpiece" and an example of "artistic genius.

(Chantrey's sculpture of Sir Walter Scott was commissioned for Victoria Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia.)

Among Westmacott III's most notable works is the pediment of the Royal Exchange (London); the monument commemorating Sir John Franklin (Greenwich Hospital).

Woodington's work includes statues on Westminster Bridge, Nelson's Column (Trafalgar Square), St. Paul's Cathedral, and the House of Lords.

Doctors used the church as an emergency hospital, using the two vestries to tend to the wounded, while the bodies of the dead were stacked on top of each other around the walls of the nave.

There remains two artifacts in the church from this disaster: the "Explosion Window", which shattered to form a silhouette of a man's head and shoulders.

There is also a piece of a steel window frame that remains embedded in the wall of the vestibule above the inside doors to the church.