The Columbia Museum of history, a repository for those precious objects which represent the various facets of Columbia, Pennsylvania's history, is housed in the former English Evangelical Lutheran Church.

German immigrants founded the church in 1803, but as time passed, they became more assimilated, and most of the town's remaining Lutherans spoke no German. Thus, by 1850, pressures increased to have an English language service. The congregation purchased a plot of land on Second street, at Alley H, between Locust and Walnut streets, and soon after April 5, 1850, the cornerstone was laid and construction began.

The first structure was a simple rectangular building some 45 feet wide at the street and 55 feet deep. It was brick, it had a simple flat front with a central doorway, and it had a gable with a triangular pediment. According to early illustrations, a four-sided belfry surmounted by two round-top domes--the upper smaller than the lower--was on the peak of the roof.

The congregation subscribed half of the building costs of $6,390 before the work began in 1850. Seven years later they spent $105 for a melodeon, and by 1872 they added a pipe organ. Finances were such, in 1872, that they owed the pastor $85 and the treasury was bare.

Three years later, finances improved to the point that the congregation approved spending $10,000 to have a central bay added to the front of the building, to replace the belfry with a lofty belfry and spire, and to modernize both the upper and lower church rooms. At the same time, they added the semi-circular transom, the date stone over the front door, and the small circular window high-up in the center of the front.

The parish house was built in 1888, and for some years it was used as a parsonage. As time passed, the minister was housed elsewhere and the parish house became the home for the sexton and was also used, in part, for Sunday School classes. Unfortunately, when the congregation constructed a new edifice at Fifth and Chestnut streets--the First English Lutheran Church--in 1952, the original place of worship was sold to the Shaub machine shop and used for that purpose for many years.

Some years later, when the machine shop suspended operations at that site, the buildings were acquired by the Lancaster County Redevelopment Authority. In 1979, that agency turned them over to Columbia Area Improvement which, in turn, transferred the church and manse to the original Columbia Museum Commission.

The Columbia Museum Commission became the Columbia Historic Preservation Society in 1984 with a goal aimed at preserving Columbia's historical and cultural environment by providing a museum which will display the community's 250 years of progress, and which will show, by means of historically significant artifacts, the development and changes over the years. By working together in establishing a museum, the society's original goals are to restore some of our lost culture, to enhance the downtown appearance of Columbia, and to create a useful project of which the community can be proud.