The original St. Paul’s Lutheran Church was built in Vladivostok already in 1878 for the Lutheran Congregation.   This small group consisted at that time of former exiles and businessmen mostly from the Baltic states and Germany The construction of the church was sponsored by Otto Rein, an organist from Sitka, Alaska, who settled in Vladivostok. 

     In 1908 the original wooden structure was replaced by architect Junghändel in Gothic style.  Constructed of baked bricks, the entire new church with its pointed arch and ribbed vault looks medieval.

     The building was used as a church until 1930. The fate of the last pastor, V. Reichwald, who was a Russian German, was tragic: accused of having participated in suppressing the peasant insurrections in pre-Revolutionary Russia, of spying for the Germans during World War I, and of collaborating with fascist Germany, he was arrested in 1935 and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment.   Reichwald’s further fate is unknown; most probably he died in prison.