After an initial period during which the church flourished, its community declined steadily, particularly after the Second World War. As young families increasingly left the neighbourhood, the community became smaller. In 1971 it was decided to close the church. In subsequent years it was used as a carpet store and then a supermarket.
As more and more people were leaving the canal district where The Sower was located, it was decided to abandon the church on the Keizersgracht and to build a new one on the location of Saint Joseph’s Chapel on the Rozengracht. It was completed in 1929. This new building was designed by H.W. Valk and again took the name, The Sower. It was a monumental church building in traditional style.
The Calvinist Reformed Bethelkerk (Bethel Church), built by the architect E.A.C. Roest, was erected in 1928 in De Baarsjes in West Amsterdam, as a Protestant counterpart to the neighbouring Catholic Chassé church.
A new Catholic church, designed by K.P. Tholens and devoted to “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”, was constructed as an integral part of De Baarsjes, a new neighbourhood in West Amsterdam. The Chassé Church, as it was popularly known, was a big church and part of a Catholic enclave that also included a vicarage, schools and a nunnery. Kees Fens, a well-known literary critic and author who grew up next to the church in the 1930s, has noted that the neighbourhood was characterized by an “intense churchly engagement” and by the “unavoidability” of faith.
St Saviour's church became Southwark Cathedral and the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Southwark, serving over 300 parishes from the River Thames in the north to Gatwick Airport in the South.
Failure to pay the mortgage led the Social Democratic League to sell “Constantia”. It was bought by a Jesuit church community called “The Sower” (De Zaaier). Their original 17th century building was a clandestine or hidden church (schuilkerk) on the Keizersgracht, during the period of the Dutch Republic when Catholics were prohibited from meeting in publicly visible churches. The clandestine church was replaced by a purpose built church in 1837. The purchase of “Constantia” by the Jesuits dismayed the socialist owners of the building and it was only possible with the help of a middle man. The Jesuits converted the building, where – according to a Catholic newspaper – “until that time the devil had roamed and God had been so much defamed”. The new church was called Saint Joseph’s Chapel.
The socialist Social Democratic League (Sociaal-Democratische Bond) constructed a building at Rozengracht 152, in the Jordaan neighbourhood, to serve as their headquarters. They named it “Constantia”. The party’s leader Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuis, who had started his career as a Protestant preacher, used to give speeches there. Domela Nieuwenhuis was a charismatic speaker who was often attributed with messianic qualities by his supporters.
Plans to build a new London Bridge close to the church threatened the building's future. To make room, a chapel on the southside was demolished. During the nineteenth century, various aspects of the church were refurbished and rebuilt.
Harper Road was the site of Horsemonger Lane Gaol, one of several prisons in Southwark, where Charles Dickens witnessed a double hanging in 1849. Dickens’ father had been imprisoned as a debtor in another local prison, the Marshalsea.
The burial ground on Red Cross Street (later Redcross Way) opened as a paupers’ graveyard for St. Saviour's parish. It remained open for nearly a century until it was completely full and deemed a threat to public health and decency.
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