It was commissioned from the firm Honeyman & Keppie by the Free Church of Saint Matthew in 1896. The site they had chosen was not ideal; it was situated on a corner sandwiched between warehouses and tenement buildings. Perhaps it was for this reason that John Honeyman passed the job onto Mackintosh, at that point only a trainee with the architecture firm.  

The church required a simple design, and so rather than the traditional spire dominating the building, Mackintosh elected to employ a Modern Gothic style. The church has a corner tower, which gives the building the look of a fort. These towers were quite common in that period; many have survived and can be seen among Glasgow’s present-day rooftops. Mackintosh would later design a grander tower for the Glasgow Herald Building, which was used in that period as a place to store water in case of fire. In the case of Queens Cross Church, the trainee architect added features to the simple style that would soon become synonymous with the young architect, namely the narrow, stylistic windows, and the curved heart shapes embedded in the doors and pulpits.