File:Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center - fmr Nest No. 1, Fraternal Order of Orioles - Buffalo, New York - 20210902.jpg

English: The Dnipro Ukrainian Cultural Center, 562 Genesee Street, Buffalo, New York, September 2021. Designed in the Neo-Renaissance style by the prolific local architectural firm of Esenwein & Johnson, the building is notable for its monumental-scale, Classical-derived façade in which, on the upper floors, vertical columns of windows are intercalated with a quintet of engaged, stylized, fluted Corinthian columns, which "support" and engaged entablature and cornice where the engraved word ORIOLES is flanked by pairs of paterae. The more restrained ground floor sports twin entrances at each end of the façade and, in between, a quartet of multi-light windows framed by metal-crested stone sills. The building was inaugurated in 1915 as home of the local "nest", and would go on to serve for a time as national headquarters, of the Fraternal Order of Orioles, a German-American social, charitable, and mutual aid organization that was well situated on what was then the main drag of Buffalo's ethnic enclave. The interior of the building had, and retains, a decided Teutonic flair: the elegant club lounge features a rathskeller-style vaulted ceiling, and there's a bowling alley in the basement. More darkly, in 1922 the building hosted a meeting of the National Businessmen Association of America, a Ku Klux Klan front organization, and was in 1936 the site of the founding of the Nazi-aligned German-American Bund. Seized by the city in the aftermath of World War II, the building was purchased at auction in 1955 by the Ukrainian Cultural Center of Buffalo, who use it for a variety of purposes: as a social hall and cultural center for the city's Ukrainian-American community, as the offices of the Buffalo branch of the Ukrainian Federal Credit Union, as a restaurant and event venue, and for rent to the public.