Downtown Baptist Church of Alexandria was founded to keep a Southern Baptist Church in downtown Alexandria and to preserve the city's oldest Baptist building.
The church was originally built in 1803 by the Alexandria Baptist Society. The church sanctuary building was rebuilt in 1830 after it largely was destroyed in a fire. During the Civil War, Union troops took over the church for use as a hospital.
When another Baptist church called First Baptist moved out of Old Town and further down King Street, a small group of Baptists decided to founded the current Downtown Baptist Church in the early 1950s.