File:Community Music School - fmr Lutheran Church Home - Buffalo, New York - 20210222.jpg

English: Community Music School, 217 East Delavan Avenue at Pleasant Place, Buffalo, New York, February 2021. Designed by noted architect Louis Greenstein, this three-story brick edifice exemplifies the Colonial Revival style with a panoply of fine exterior detailing that's especially notable in the splayed stone lintels above each window and at the roofline, where a brick parapet alternating with pleasant balustrades crowns a modillion cornice and a small dentil row executed in carved wood. The latter two elements are echoed on the portico that frames the entrance, delineated by four pairs of handsome Ionic columns separated by spindle balustrades. Originally, this was the home of the Associated Lutheran Church Home for the Aged and Infirm, which was founded in 1896 by a consortium of twelve area Lutheran churches, representing both German- and English-speaking congregations, as "a home for deserving old people during their old age... the idea being to maintain the place as a home and not an institution". The facility was originally found on Walden Avenue, conveniently(?) located only two blocks from the also Lutheran-run Concordia Cemetery; the above quotes were taken from a 1906 Buffalo Times article about the facility's move to the above building, on land that was once the country estate of August Hager (1830-1901), a Bavarian-born farmer who, as an older man, entered the retail grocery and liquor business after the expansion of Buffalo's urbanized area had encompassed his former farmland. In dividing and selling his former estate, Hager was responsible for much of the early development of the area now known as Hamlin Park. The Lutheran Church Home continued in existence until 2013, and the next year was purchased by Ellicott Development, who, after some wrangling with concerned neighborhood activists about their proposal for the site's reuse, announced it in 2019 as the new home of the not-for-profit Community Music School, which was founded in 1926 and had been located in the Elmwood Village for most of the ensuing period.