File:Former St. Stephen the King RC Church, Oswego, New York - 20210221.jpg

English: The former St. Stephen the King Roman Catholic Church, 138 Niagara Street, Oswego, New York, February 2021. Dedicated in 1910, this is the only extant building outside Erie and Niagara Counties to have been designed by Władysław Zawadzki, an architect noted for his work with the Polish-American communities of his hometown of Buffalo, New York and the other places he practiced. The building exemplifies the architect's signature style fairly well despite some significant divergences therefrom: the Gothic Revival style is employed rather than the French Renaissance, and the forms are simpler and more austere than usual, but classic Zawadzki characteristics such as stubby massing, prominent window heads that stand in stark color contrast to the darker-shaded façade, and ornamental keystones make their requisite appearance. St. Stephen's was founded in 1908 to serve a growing Polish-American community that had come to work in Oswego's bustling shipping industry, and was named after a medieval king of Hungry whose mother was alleged to have been Polish royalty. Karol Cardinal Wojtyla visited St. Stephen on the tour of the U.S. that he undertook several years before his elevation to the head of the church as Pope John Paul II, but that same era saw the beginning of a decline in the parish's fortunes, with Father Andrew Baranski faced with the difficult task of "linking" St. Stephen with the traditionally Italian-American parish of St. Joseph, sharing a priest, staff and resources to head off the problems associated with a shrinking membership. Finally, in 2019, the Catholic Diocese of Syracuse made the decision to merge all five of Oswego's Catholic congregations - St. Stephen and St. Joseph along with St. Mary of the Assumption and St. Paul - into one parish, named Christ the Good Shepherd, whose ordinary weekly Masses would be held at the latter church. However, noting its "significance to the ethnic Polish community of Oswego", the diocese announced that the former St. Stephen's building would, "as resources allow", remain open as an oratory; that is, a secondary worship site that "may be used for funerals, weddings and ethnic feasts", the latter having "been the tradition of the former parish".