St. John stretch reverent rob fischer. Law welcome good evening my name is rob fischer i am the director of st. Johns church, and i am thrilled that our friends at the White House Historical association asked us to provide space for tonights conversation. Stewart asked if i would share a little bit of a history of this historic room that you are sitting in tonight, and so i will share with you this church was completed in 1816. The architect was Benjamin Henri vitro, and not only did he designs church, he was working on rebuilding the white house after it was destroyed by the british in the war of 18. 12 in 1818, he built what is now the home of the historical association. And if you go inside the dictator house, and you look up, you see a similar entrance. Its almost like a miniature of this dome of we have in our church space. The Original Church was built as a greek cross, so it wasnt even four sides. In just six years later, in 1822, they expanded the Church Building to make room f