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Image: St. John the Baptist RC Church - 20200508

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Description: The former St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church, 62 Hertel Avenue at East Street, Buffalo, New York, May 2020. Typical of the aesthetic of the firm of Oakley and Schallmo in the field of religious architecture, the building's design is a hybrid of the Spanish Baroque and Italian Gothic styles, the former of which is exemplified by the red tile roof and the twisted columns at either side of the entrance; the latter by the prominent buttresses along the sides of the building and the massive rose window framed by a glazed terra cotta surround bedecked with rosettes and egg-and-dart molding. St. John the Baptist Roman Catholic Church traces its history back to 1868, when the traditionally German-American parish of St. Francis Xavier found itself grappling with stratospheric population growth and also changing ethnic and linguistic demographics (anglophone Irish-Americans were becoming a formidable presence). A small brick church erected on this site was enlarged considerably in 1872, then razed and replaced with the current one in 1927. A wave of consolidation led to St. John the Baptist's dissolution as an active parish in 2007; Witness Cathedral, an African-American congregation of the Church of God in Christ led by pastor Ronald Kirk, finalized their controversial purchase of the building three years later (their previous home the former Sacred Heart Catholic Church on the East Side, which they'd neglected to the point where it became structurally unsound and the congregation was evicted for its own safety); however, it's vacant once again as of this writing. The former parish school, seen at far right to the rear of the main building, is used by River Rock Church, a congregation comprised mostly of Burmese immigrants.
Title: St. John the Baptist RC Church - 20200508
Credit: Own work
Author: Andre Carrotflower
Usage Terms: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0
License: CC BY-SA 4.0
License Link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
Attribution Required?: Yes

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