Active in central Pennsylvania by 1805, Lutheran missionaries of German descent had organized the First Lutheran Church by 1834. their earliest recorded church was a log house near what is now the intersection of 4th Avenue and 23rd Street this 1830s building is no longer extant. In 1853, shortly after Altoona was plotted, the congregation purchased a lot on 11th Avenue between 14th and 15th streets, next to another lot that Archibald Wright had donated to the congregation through his son, John Wright. The First Lutheran Church and parsonage were erected on these two lots; the cornerstone was laid on July 23, 1853, and the building was dedicated on August 13, 1854. This two-story brick church, which measured 46′ x 75′, was in the Gothic Revival style, seated 750, and cost an estimated $7,000 (equivalent to $294,853.27 today).

By the 1890’s, however, the brick church proved insufficient for the needs of the rapidly expanding congregation. A wave of religious enthusiasm had swept through Altoona in the late 1870s, swelling the ranks of the Lutheran congregation. Its temperance and missionary societies were thriving, as was the newly established Sunday School, which boasted an enrollment of 1,000. Moreover, the church’s proximity to the railroad tracks to the south, and the streetcars to the north, resulted in a noisy, distracting environment that was less than ideal for religious worship. The church decided to reolate and rebuild in what was then a tranquil, upper-class residential neighborhood, one block north of its current location on the main commercial street. Two adjacent lots were purchased on the southwest corner of 12th Avenue and 14th Street, and funds for the construction of the new building were raised through private subscription. Ground was broken April 3, 1896, and the church was dedicated on May 21, 1897.

Over the past 150 years, eight of Altoona’s Lutheran congregations have descended from the First Church.