S. John's purchased the house on Poplar Street immediately west of its Guild Hall in the 1920's. This house had been built in 1832 in the then popular Greek Revival style for William H. Crandall, a ship builder, and his large family. This same man provided the land for S. John's first church building when he sold the vegetable garden adjacent to his house to the Trinity Church mission in 1875. The Trinity Church mission, which later became the Free Chapel of Saint John the Evangelist, built a board-and-batten church on this site. (Following completion of S. John's new stone church building in 1894, the wooden chapel was converted to serve as S. John's Guild Hall.) The Crandalls' home was named Grafton House in honor of the Right Reverend Charles Chapman Grafton (1830-1912), Bishop of Fond du Lac in Wisconsin. A Boston native, Grafton had been ordained a priest in 1858. During a long sojourn in England in the 1860's, he became one of the founding members of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE), also known as the Cowley Fathers, the first Anglican religious order for men since the Reformation. From 1872 until 1888, he was Rector of the Church of the Advent in Boston. Grafton's consecration in 1889 as the second Bishop of Fond du Lac brought an Anglo-Catholic of exemplary credentials to the episcopate. His writings are still influential and his efforts on behalf of the Church are still well remembered. As an Anglo-Catholic parish, S. John's members thought it appropriate to name their newly purchased parish house in honor of this preeminent churchman. S. John's used Grafton House for parish activities for a number of years. The house was later converted into a 3-apartment building and rented to persons connected with the parish, a function it fulfills to this day.
