The First Presbyterian Church began holding services at its new building at the Northeast corner of Market and Seventh Streets around 1851. The building was frame with steep steps on the front and tall square shaped and shuttered belfry. A prayer service in honor of the National Confederate Day of Prayer was being held on August 9, 1863, and the church's pastor, T.H. McCallie opened the service and introduced Dr. B.M. Palmer, a visiting minister from New Orleans. As Dr. Palmer began to pray, the screaming sound of Union shells flew over the church, and the boom of Union cannon across the Tennessee River could be heard. Soldiers quietly got up and left the church, but Dr. Palmer kept praying as John T. Wilders federal troops began eighteen days of shelling Chattanooga.
Elizabeth Kaylor Bailey's diary entry for that day: "Federal troops began to shell the town from north of the river. There was, of course, much excitement and confusion-soldiers leaving to join their regiments in haste, women crying in fright. I remember my mother was very calm and was among the last to leave the church. We saw people flying in all directions, eager to find places of safety."
When the confederate army abandoned Chattanooga and the Union army occupied it, Bailey noted the change in the congregation: "On the first Sunday of September the pastor preached to a house filled with gray coats, soldiers and officers of the confederate army, with a scattering of citizens here and there. On the second Sunday, we had a crowded house again, but it was blue coats-officers and soldiers of the Union army, and probably not ten citizens and church members in the house."
The church was used as a hospital as the war progressed, and by the time the war was over, it was in very bad condition, with seats removed, carpet destroyed, and the furnace and roof in serious disrepair. The federal government provided funding to fix the building and services resumed in 1866. Around 1881, the church decided to move to a site bounded by Seventh and Walnut Streets and Georgia Avenue, and the building was sold. In 1883, the old church building was demolished and the building which currently houses the United Way of Greater Chattanooga and the Chattanooga Center for Nonprofits was built.
