After Frederick Douglas was denied the pulpit of the Second Parish Congregational Church in Biddeford, disappointed abolitionist members met in a pavilion tent erected for the 1855 Maine Republican Party convention, and the Pavilion Church was founded that same year. John Stevens of Boston designed and erected this brick church and a similar one in Saco in 1863, both in the Romanesque style with an Inigo Jones-type steeple. The Biddeford Library was also begun in 1863, but it was lost in the 1894 City Hall fire. In 1906, Robert McArthur, an agent for the Pepperell mills, bought the church building and created an endowment to re-establish the library, and the steeple, thought inappropriate, was removed. Additions were made in 1995 thanks to a gift from the local Rotary Club.