In 1891 Middlebury's Methodists overcame a double loss when they erected one of the most sophisticated Queen Anne churches in the state. A fire had destroyed their 1837 church just when Secretary of War Redfield Proctor called prominent parishioner and architect Clinton G. Smith to Washington as his chief of construction. Though the parish commissioned plans for a new church from Valk and Sons of Brooklyn, they sent them to Smith to make revisions and ultimately hired his firm, Smith and Piper, to execute them. The result is a building influenced by the work of H. H. Richardson in its subdued polychromy of blue and red stone, brick, and slate, vigorously massed tower, Syrian-arched porch, rusticated base from which swelling brackets rise to carry the load of the dominating roof, and Shingle Style slate-covered gables. The non-figural “opal” and “jeweled” (as described at the time) stained glass windows were fabricated by the Tyndall Company of Washington, D.C.