Church was founded in 1869. The first structure used by the congregation was a former public hall on Cumberland Street. From 1871 to 1893, the congregation worshipped in a frame church that they had moved from Gold Street to Carlton Avenue near Myrtle Avenue.1

Architect of St. Luke's German Evangelical Lutheran Church (1894), St. Mark's Protestant Episcopal Church, 222 Adelphi Street (Marshall & Walters, 1888), Memorial Presbyterain Church (Pugin & Walter, 1882-83), Chapel and Sunday School (Marshall & Walter, 1883), Seventh Avenue & St. John's Place.

The original Church of St. Rose of Lima was constructed 1870. The wood-frame Gothic-style church was designed by Thomas F. Houghton. The church, with a capacity of 300, was the first Catholic church to serve the people of the Greenfield section of southern Brooklyn.

First mass on the morning of August 4, 1889, in the second floor of the frame building at 1747 Fulton Street. Ground for the church was purchased in September, 1889, and in October the corner stone was laid by the late Bishop Laughlin.1Designed by Thomas F. Houghton.2

Constructed in 1891 by furrier Louis Zechiel, this 5-story loft building sits at the junction of South 8th Street and Broadway, which gives the buildings its splayed plan form. The building is three bays wide at the first and second stories (the two western bays are on South 8th Street; the eastern bay is on Broadway) and nine bays wide at the upper three stories. On the upper stories the three windows at the center bay are divided by Ionic pilasters, with square arches at the third and fourth story and round arches at the top story.