File:Cedar Grove Baptist Church - fmr Mother of Divine Grace RC Church - Cheektowaga, New York - 20220708.jpg

English: Cedar Grove Baptist Church, 100 Old Maryvale Drive, Cheektowaga, New York, July 2022. Built in 1948, the design of this two-story brick church in the Cleveland Hill section of the town might be described as ecclesiastical architecture's answer to the so-called "Minimal Traditional" trend in home design, or perhaps a midcentury continuation of the Stripped Classical aesthetic that had been popular twenty or thirty years earlier. More specifically, here we have a building whose boxy angularity is very much in keeping with the Modernism that was now taking the architecture world by storm, but whose façade is beautified by throwbacks to earlier styles - in this case, the Colonial Revival - albeit presented in simplified form. Note the arch above the main entrance, with stained-glass tracery taking the place of a fanlight, and the four brick pilaster strips with stylized capitals flanking it and supporting a broken pediment flush with the parapeted roofline. Between the floors, cut-stone panels bear Latin inscriptions honoring the Virgin Mary, a legacy of the building's original occupant, Mother of Divine Grace Roman Catholic Church. One of three parishes (the others were Infant of Prague and Queen of Martyrs) that trace their history back to May 1946, when they were founded simultaneously by Buffalo bishop John O'Hara to serve the Catholic residents of what was then a rapidly growing suburban community, founding pastor Rev. James Lucid held Mass in the community hall of the adjacent Tiorunda housing project while a permanent building was under construction. (A proposal by the Buffalo Common Council to sell them the mess hall of the then-city owned Municipal Airport for $1 was scuttled when it was discovered that the law prohibited the transfer of public property by any means other than auction.) Mother of Divine Grace used the building for worship continually until their merger with the aforementioned Infant of Prague in 2008 as part of the "Journey in Faith and Grace" parish consolidation program. Cedar Grove Baptist Church then purchased it from the diocese and has continued to hold services there ever since.