In 2008 Cincinnati Preservation Association completed a $500,000 restoration of the Walnut Hills Presbyterian Church Tower.  The tower, standing nearly ten stories tall at the corner of Taft and Gilbert,  serves as a constant reminder of the courageous stand for abolition and racial justice as a gateway to the Harriet Beecher Stowe House. 

Lyman Beecher, father of Stowe, was pastor at the First Presbyterian Church and the first president of the Lane Seminary, both established in the neighborhood by James Kemper in 1818.

In 1834, the seminary held the Lane Debates, the first public forum in which African Americans debated the issue of slavery, largely credited with swaying American social thought.

The church, designed by Samuel Hannaford and built in 1885, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The rest of the building was razed in 2003 but with partnership of the Walnut Hills Redevelopment Foundation, the tower portion of the church was saved.