File:Former West Avenue Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York - 20211213.jpg

English: The former West Avenue Presbyterian Church, 90 West Ferry Street at West Avenue, Buffalo, New York, December 2021. Built in 1891 to a design by locally-based architect Edward Austin Kent, this robust, ponderous-looking edifice is a good exemplification of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture with its rough-textured sandstone masonry walls, preponderance of round arches, and overall stout, bottom-heavy massing. Worthy of special note is the corner tower, with the simplicity of its pyramidal roof coming in stark contrast to its façade, wherein paired round-arched windows are topped by a roundel and framed by consecutive blind arches, with detailing including pilaster strips with stylized stone capitals, a diaper pattern in the masonry work of the tympanum, and impressive corbelling underneath the outermost arch. The congregation originally known as the First Presbyterian Church of Black Rock was founded in 1831 and spent its initial years holding services in the former Union Meeting House near the foot of Breckenridge Street, which still stands and is today the oldest extant church building in Buffalo. Having outgrown that small edifice, they had this church built for them beginning in 1889 and continued worshipping there for over a century, until a dwindling membership tally forced the flock's disbanding in 2011. After a brief period of use by the nondenominational, multiracial All Nations House of Prayer, the building was purchased by Rich Products Corporation in 2021 and was named a local historic landmark that same year.