File:Buffalo Chinese Christian Church - fmr Ascension aka Crossroads Lutheran Church - Amherst, New York - 20221024.jpg

English: The Buffalo Chinese Christian Church, 4640 Main Street at Burroughs Drive, Amherst, New York, October 2022. A Colonial Revival-style design typical of the contemporaneous work of the Buffalo firm of Shelgren & Whitman, here we see a bevy of the architects' favorite tropes on full display: quoins framing the vertical sides of the façade (brick in this case, differing from the typical stone trim); a prominent central tower with louvers and a bell-shaped copper cupola; Classical detail applied subtly (the front gable of the roof faced in clapboard to suggest a pediment; the framing of the entrance with a simple cornice above). Note also the narrow six-over-six-over-six sash windows that line the nave to the left of the entrance, an unusual substitute for the typical stained glass tableaux. The building was originally home to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Ascension, which was founded in 1927 and helmed at the outset by the Rev. Eugene L. Stowell, who at the time he was hired was still a student at the Lutheran seminary in Philadelphia and could only preach on a part-time basis for his first few months in the post. The fledgling church worshiped in various rented sites, including the Snyder fire hall and the former District #18 schoolhouse, before the onset of the mass migration of middle-class families to the suburbs led the congregation to more than double in size in the ten years after World War II. The process of constructing a permanent, purpose-built home for Ascension began in 1949, when Shelgren & Whitman designed and built a parish house on the site which also served for five years as a temporary worship space. (This portion of the complex now houses administrative offices, meeting space, and a small chapel.) Fundraising for the construction of the church itself (to the tune of $250,000) began in 1954, four years before it was completed. The congregation held services in the building for the next 62 years, the last 11 of them under the name Crossroads Lutheran Church - an apt rebrand, as they struggled in their final years with diminishing membership. After formally dissolving in 2020, the Lutherans sold the building to the Buffalo Chinese Christian Church, which had been founded in 1978 to serve the growing Chinese student community at the University at Buffalo and which had heretofore been headquartered on Englewood Avenue in Tonawanda.