The Vermont Avenue Christian Church was dedicated as a memorial to recently assassinated President James A. Garfield, who had been a member of the congregation. Its architect from Hartford, Connecticut, R. G. Russell, designed the church following a common formula for High Victorian Gothic churches: an asymmetrical corner tower with a broach spire serving as an entry abruptly abuts a tall gabled facade divided horizontally into several zones. Although Russell employed the same architectural vocabulary as Judson York's Luther Place Memorial Church (see NE16) and followed the compositional rules of the style more closely, his building is of inferior architectural quality in that he lacked Clark's sense of proportion and response to the possibilities of materials.