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This was the third home of the oldest Congregationalist organization in the Pacific Northwest. The Swiss-born architect Henry J. Hefty (born 1858) produced a High Victorian Gothic Style design influenced by Boston's Old South Church (1873), designed by Charles Amos Cummings (1833–1905) and Willard T. Sears (1837-1920). The church's web site stated: "Our building is considered to be one of the few examples of Venetian Gothic architecture in the United States." (See "Building History,"Accessed 07/22/2014.) Cummings had been heavily influenced by the English theorist John Ruskin and his beliefs regarding the integrity of Gothic Architecture. Between 1851 and 1853, Ruskin wrote the three-volume work, The Stones of Venice, extolling the virtues of the Venetian Gothic. This book had a large readership in the England and the US and many of its ideas underlay theories of the later Arts and Crafts Movement.

The out-sized, 175-foot tower of the 1st Congregational Church #3 recalled the San Marco Campanile (1513, rebuilt 1902-1912) in Venice, and was, for years, the tallest building in Portland. (The San Marco Campanile became a favorite tower model for architects during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. See, for example, John Galen Howard's Sather Tower [1914] at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) or Reed and Stem's clock tower of Seattle's rail hub, the King Street Depot #2 [1906].)

Due to structural deterioration and a lack of funding to repair them, three shorter towers on the church's corners were removed in 1951. (See "Bell Tower Restoration",Accessed 07/22/2014.)