Our Beautiful Church
The current church building is well over 100 years old. Work began, as the cornerstone indicates, in 1904. The first ceremony took place in 1906. The land had been given at a fraction of its full value by one of Buffalo's greatest philanthropists, J. J. Albright, whose name is also associated with Buffalo's famed modern art gallery. Mr. Albright owned a company that would one day become Bethlehem Steel, perhaps the largest employer in Buffalo history. He stipulated several design features for the new church.
The architect for the building was a member of a prominent family in the congregation. He was Edward Austin Kent, who had studied at the Paris Ecole des Beaux Arts. Mr. Kent was the only Buffalonian to go down with the Titanic, performing several heroic acts getting women and children into lifeboats. The building itself is in the English Gothic Revival style. Much of the decoration reflects two trends popular at the end of the 1800's, Art Noveau and the Arts and Crafts style. Some say they can see the Art Noveau in graceful curving lines of wrought iron on the main doors that can be compared to the Paris Metro stations built at about the same time. Others feel that the church has the same sense of space that is found in Shakespeare's parish church in Stratford, England. The most striking element as you enter the interior of the church are the magnificent hammer beams, exposed arching structures of wood that transfer the weight of the roof to the side walls. Most churches have these structures hidden above a ceiling, here they are finely finished so their form can attest to their function. The hammer beams meet the Indiana limestone walls in heavy outcropping stones called korbels. |
Mr. Kent persuaded the Board of Trustees of the time to allow him to dedicate with inscription the right stone to his mother, the left to his father. Two other korbels were to be ornately carved, but funds were short. They were left blank with the intention of carving them when the funds became available. They remain plain today.
The stained glass windows in the side transepts are engaging. In the east window one sees a depiction in glass of the oldest known Christian work of art, a statue of the Good Shepherd now to be found in the Vatican Museum. The west window portrays the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. The reredos in the Arts and Crafts style possesses expanses of quarter sawn wood, a method not done today because of the amount of wood in a tree that is discarded in the process. Buffalo is a favorite destination for architecture buffs. Such tours often stop at the gem that is the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo. |