The first Grafton Street Methodist Church was built in 1852, only to burn in one of Halifax's many fires on February 23, 1868. The small cemetery beside the church predates even that church, having been used from 1793 to 1844. It was known as the Old Methodist Burying Ground and is now one of the holiest sites of Methodism in Eastern Canada.
Part of that old cemetery was covered over by the construction of this church hall in 1951, leaving only 30 or so headstones remaining beside the church. The hall is at the rear of the church grounds and attached to another hall on the rear of the church and faces Brunswick Street. Though of a more contemporary design than the church, it was given Gothic arched windows with colored glass on the sides.
The present Grafton Street Methodist Church replaced that church, opening for services on November 7, 1869. The building remained a Methodist church until June of 1925, when Church Union in Canada made it redundant.
The few Presbyterians who resisted union established The Presbyterian Church, Halifax in 1925. Very soon afterward the church bought this building and in 1930 it was renamed to become The Presbyterian Church of Saint David.
The Presbyterian Church of Saint David was born in 1925, when its parent, The Presbyterian Church in Canada, was in danger of disintegrating in the face of inter-denominational church union among Presbyterians, Methodists and Congregationalists.
The Presbyterian men and women who resisted union did so positively and constructively by first forming the Halifax chapter of the Presbyterian Church Association in 1924 and then establishing The Presbyterian Church, Halifax (incorporated, 1925).
Soon afterwards, the Presbyterians leased and then purchased the former Grafton Street Methodist Church as a congregational home. Built in 1868-69, in the early English style of Trinity Methodist in Charlottetown, the building was designed by David Sterling, architect of Fort Massey Presbyterian (now United) Church in Halifax, and is a registered [Provincial] heritage property. It stands over and in the midst of the Old Methodist Burying Ground of Halifax, one of the most sacred sites of Maritime Methodism.
From Saint David's Presbyterian