File:First Baptist Church, Medina, New York - 20210515.jpg

English: First Baptist Church, 203 West Center Street at West Avenue, Medina, New York, May 2021. A majestic building of locally-quarried gray sandstone, First Baptist was constructed between 1870 and '73 for a price of over $45,000. Here we see an example of Gothic Revivalism tempered with influences from the then-even more popular Romanesque Revival style: contrast the stout massing of the main portion of the building, representative of the latter with its broad frontal gable and windows that are few in number and relatively small, with the unmistakably Gothic vertical orientation of the corner tower, with its stepped buttresses flanking each elevation near the corner and its needlelike, finial-topped spire. The whimsical cone-shaped spire on the opposite side of the gable, the trefoil relief near its summit, and - of course - the pointed arches crowning the entrance and each window also speak to the Gothic Revival. First Baptist's history dates back to 1831 - the very dawn of the era of large-scale white settlement in Orleans County - and the congregation originally worshipped in a converted barn a block east of the present church, behind the Medina House Hotel (the building where Avanti Pizza is now), on the current site of the R. H. Newell & Co. building. Their first purpose-built building was erected in 1832.