Image: Fillmore Community Church - fmr First Polish Baptist Church - 20200621

Description: Fillmore Community Church, 821 Fillmore Avenue, Buffalo, New York, June 2020. Certainly among the smaller and simpler of the many church buildings designed by architect John H. Coxhead, the exterior ornamentation of this Romanesque Revival-style brick building is simplified yet exuberant in its own way: the windows are invariably round-arched and topped with narrow and similarly round-arched window crowns, while the entrance is Classically-inspired, with a pediment and a quartet of engaged Ionic pilasters. The building was home for many years to the First Polish Baptist Church, which was indeed the first Polish Baptist church not only in Buffalo but in the entire country; the foundation by Revered Joseph Antoszewski and the Buffalo Baptist Union of a mission church to minister to the overwhelmingly Catholic community of Poles in Broadway-Fillmore was met with sometimes violent opposition; Antoszewski was described in the local Polish-language press as "a devil come to this country to upset its religious peace", the church itself was derided as a "heresy hole", and stones were thrown through its windows on a regular basis. A series of temporary worship spaces preceded the construction of the current building in 1907; the congregation remained in its original location until 1963 when, like the bulk of Buffalo's Polish community, it pulled up stakes and moved to the suburb of Cheektowaga, where it's still active under the name Cheektowaga Baptist Church. The building has been home to the Fillmore Community Church (originally under the name Fillmore Avenue Baptist Church) since 1987.
Title: Fillmore Community Church - fmr First Polish Baptist Church - 20200621
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
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