[2][3] The church, made of red brick with white pilasters on the façade and topped by a clock tower and a belfry, was originally designed as the second edifice of the New North Religious Society, a Congregationalist group.

By 1822 the church was complaining that “the young gentlemen who have married wives in other parts of the town have found it difficult to persuade them to become so ungenteel as to attend worship in the North End”;[6] Parkman himself preferred to live in the vicinity of Bowdoin Square.

In 1964 Cardinal Richard James Cushing authorized the restoration of the church, including the lowering of the building upon its original foundation and the reconstruction of the Bulfinch cupola.

During the restoration a careful search was made for evidence of the original work, and in the process the old copper-covered dome was found beneath the false cap and the side entrance doors, complete with hardware, were discovered bricked up in the porch.

George E. Ryan wrote of the restoration work: By summer’s end, 1965, St. Stephen’s Church...had been moved a total of 25 feet – up, down, and backwards – in a history that began more than 160 years ago.

[9]The interior is not entirely faithful to the Bulfinch design, although the pulpit and pews are copied from originals long held in a Billerica, Massachusetts church.

The brownstone pilasters in the façade were meant to be painted white to simulate marble, as in a number of surviving houses on Beacon Hill.