The concentration of breweries on the periphery of Mission Hill attracted a large German American labor force. Lutherans built this church to replace their small wood-frame chapel that still stands at 716 Parker Street. The Lutheran congregation hired a local architect with a German background, Jacob Luippold, to design a large brick Gothic church. Luippold, who had worked as a carpenter for twenty years, during which period he evidently designed buildings, did not list himself as an architect until around 1890, shortly before he designed this church. He specialized in multifamily housing. The Gloucester Memorial Presbyterian Church, his most ambitious building, is designed in a Venetian Gothic style with polychromatic lancet arches, retardataire for the 1890s. In the 1950s, a Presbyterian congregation purchased the church and named it in honor of the first black minister of that faith in the United States. The building is currently vacant.