St. John's Episcopal Church, a Gothic Revival landmark, faces Madison Street ahead of you. Designed by the New York City architectural firm of Frank Wills and Henry Dudley, this building replaced an earlier modest brick sanctuary that parishioners occupied by 1837 on the corner of Perry and Jefferson Streets. St. John's parish itself was organized in 1834, and by 1855 the congregation completed the present structure in the same city block, turned to face Madison Street.
In the decades around the Civil War the church became entwined with national events: it hosted the Secession Convention of Southern Churches in 1861, a gathering the source says helped fuel the South’s secession movement, and it was the church attended by Confederate President Jefferson Davis when Montgomery was the capital of the Confederate States of America. Under Union Army orders the church was forced to close its doors in 1865. The building's historic significance was later recognized when it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on 24 February 1975.
Notice the Gothic details overhead and the turn toward Madison Street where this history still faces the city.