File:Old St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church (First Baptist Church), Byron Street and 12th Street, East Wheeling, Wheeling, WV - 53561763025.jpg

English: Built in 1837, this Greek Revival-style church was designed by James H. White for the congregation of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, the mother church of the West Virginia Episcopal Diocese, and housed the congregation until 1868, when a new church was constructed closer to Downtown. The church subsequently became home to the First Baptist Church congregation, and was renovated in 1892, and a later renovation in the 20th Century saw the removal of the original domed cupola, which sat above the main entrance bay near the front of the building. In 1958, the church became home to the House of Prayer congregation, and around this time, it was clad in stucco. It later became home to the Church of God’s Saints in Christ, but presently is vacant. The church features a stucco-clad exterior with a front-gable roof, a hectastyle front doric portico with stucco-clad brick columns, doric pilasters flanking the bays of the exterior of the building, a wooden entablature with triglyphs, a wooden front pediment, two rows of double-hung stained glass windows on the side facades, a stone block base, a large front staircase, and a transom with roman lattice motif over the central doorway on the front facade. The interior sanctuary is relatively simple, ringed with a second-story balcony on three sides, and features a wooden floor, plaster ceilings, a stage at the east end of the sanctuary, and a decorative cornice ringing the top of the sanctuary. The building is a contributing structure in the Monroe Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and the East Wheeling Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. The building is presently vacant, but an effort to preserve it, led by Wheeling Heritage, is presently underway.