Grace Memorial Episcopal Church, designed by architect Cass Gilbert in the English Gothic style, was consecrated by Bishop Henry Benjamin Whipple on April 28, 1901. Forty-two years earlier, while traveling by steamboat up the Mississippi River to St. Paul, Whipple began his ministry as the first bishop of the Diocese of Minnesota by holding a baptismal service in this parish, the first Episcopal service in Wabasha, in 1857. The congregation incorporated as a parish in 1866 and worshiped in a white frame building on this site until 1901, while the adjacent rectory was built in 1869. From 1872 until 1877, the Reverend Horace Hills served as rector of Grace Church, and during that time Thomas Irvine, a successful lumberman and member of the church, met and married Hills' daughter Emily. Before their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Emily Hills Irvine died, and Thomas Irvine gave the church building in loving memory of his wife and her parents, the Reverend Hills and Elizabeth Roberts Hills, asking only that the name Grace be retained. Its interior focal point is the "Resurrection" window over the altar, made by Tiffany studios of New York in 1900 and considered one of the finest windows made by the studios.