File:Holy Trinity Roman Catholic Church School Niagara Falls NY Nov 10.jpg

English: The former Holy Trinity Catholic School at 1419 Falls Street, Niagara Falls, New York, November 2010. By contrast with the church itself which is the work of Schmill & Gould, Holy Trinity Catholic School as well as all the other outbuildings on the site were designed by Buffalo-based architect Władysław Zawadzki, whose work on prominent buildings related to local Polish-American culture is notable in the Western New York area. Here, he works in a Romanesque Revival style that echoes that of the main church building while also allowing a bit of Zawadzki's own signature style to show through, mainly on the roof, which features his characteristic row of small dormers across the front. The twin entrances are the respective centerpieces of the three-story projecting bays that dominate the façade, with large sash windows interspersed with decorative wood paneling, and in whose peaked roofs are set round-arched transoms with radiating tracery, giving an effect not unlike Georgian-style fanlights. The entrances are labeled with signs reading DZIEWCZĘTA and CHŁOPCY, the Polish words for "girls" and "boys" respectively. As with the rest of the buildings on the site, the rough-textured exterior walls were built of stone that was excavated during one of the many expansions of the nearby Hydraulic Canal, which at the time was being repurposed to draw water from the Niagara River toward the new hydroelectric works to the north and west. The last to be constructed of the five principal buildings on the site, Holy Trinity School was built in 1913, furnishing a Catholic education to neighborhood children courtesy of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. The school remained in operation until the end of the 1973-74 school year; its closure was a result of a decreased parish population due to changing neighborhood demographics and the urban decline that had begun to plague the neighborhood. In 2009, a year after the closure of the church itself, the school along with the rest of the complex was purchased from the diocese by a not-for-profit group, who continues to operate the facility as a tourable historic site playing homage to Niagara Falls' Polish-American history as well as renting it out for private events. The school in particular is the site of a community thrift store whose proceeds help defray the organization's operational costs.