Church of the Pilgrims (Washington, D.C.) The Church of the Pilgrims is a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation located in Washington, D.C., in the United States. The congregation was founded in 1903 as the Second Southern Presbyterian Church and took its current name in 1919. The congregation resides in a Gothic Revival church located at 22nd Street NW and P Street NW. The building was designed by architect Benjamin C. Flournoy of Baltimore, Maryland, and completed in March 1929. The congregation got its start about September 1902. Several residents of the city sent a petition to the Virginia synod of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (commonly described as the Southern Presbyterian Church), asking them to send an evangelist to the city for the purpose of organizing a new congregation. The synod agreed, and The Reverend B. F. Bedinger was sent to the city about November 1, 1902. Within a week, he had organized about 40 members into a body of like-minded worshippers. The group began meeting and worshipping together in December 1902, and the congregation formally organized on January 25, 1903, as the Second Presbyterian Church South ( Second Presbyterian Church). Bedinger served as the first pastor, Dr. Otho M. Muncster and E. H. Cumpston as the first elders, and Dr. George DuBose, James J. Royster, and William S. Feland the first deacons. There were 43 members of the congregation, and 18 members of the Sunday School. The congregation first worshipped in a house located at 2145 P Street NW. Bedinger stayed with the church for seven months before leaving. Left without a pastor, the congregation dwindled to 26. On January 31, 1904, Rev. Harry Waddell Pratt, an energetic pastor in his 30s, accepted the call to be the congregation's first permanent pastor. The congregation grew swiftly, and by September 1904 had purchased land on 22nd Street NW between P and Q Streets for a permanent church home. Ground for the new structure was broke on October 24, 1904, and the cornerstone laid on November 24. The congregation occupied the new church on January 1, 1905, with 82 members of the congregation in attendance. Pratt resigned in the fall of 1910 to take a position as pastor of a Southern Presbyterian Church congregation in Abbeville, South Carolina. His replacement was Reverend Andrew Reid Bird, D.D., a 31-year-old from Baltimore, Maryland. The Rev. Dr. Bird was formally installed on March 6, 1911.