File:Primary Hall Preparatory Charter School - fmr Central Presbyterian Church Religious Education Building - Buffalo, New York - 20230119.jpg

English: As seen in January 2023, Primary Hall Preparatory Charter School in Buffalo, New York operates out of what was once the Religious Education Building of the former Central Presbyterian Church. Constructed in 1958 to a design by the locally-based architectural firm of Shelgren & Whitman, the building stands three stories high, is faced in beige brick, and is a fairly typical example both of the firm's work in the realm of religious school architecture and of the Modernist style as typically employed at the time for institutional purposes. Smooth textures, right angles, and a relative lack of ornamentation are the name of the game: note the flat roof, the columns of windows recessed slightly into the exterior walls and separated by dressed-stone spandrel panels, as well as the slightly projecting stone belt courses atop the first and third floors. With nearly 3,000 members, Central was at the time of this building's construction the largest Presbyterian congregation in the state outside of New York City. Though the size of the flock was then at its peak and would soon begin to gradually decline, the expectation at the time was for further growth, and the present state of affairs, according to David Donald, Jr. - the chairman of the church's new Capital Funds Advance Program, organized in May 1956 - was a need for expansion that was particularly "acute in the Christian education department", with a Sunday school enrollment of "about 700... more [of whom] would come if [they] had [adequate] facilities". Therefore, fundraising began that month for an ambitious $280,000 construction program, the lion's share of which was earmarked for a religious education building that would contain classrooms housing "Sunday school and weekday activities of children from infancy through the sixth grade", as well as facilities for the local Boy Scout troop, a kitchen and dining room, a conference room, and a small library. The balance was to pay for a new organ and chancel in the sanctuary as well as general remodeling. Money was accrued rapidly - over half of that sum was in the church coffers by the end of the first day of the fundraising drive - and construction proceeded with equal rapidity, with groundbreaking ceremonies held in June 1957, the cornerstone laid the following September, and dedication the following April with ceremonies emceed by Dr. David N. Freedman of Pittsburgh's Western Theological Seminary. The building served its original function until 2007, when Central Presbyterian shut its doors due to the aforementioned shrinkage in its membership ranks, whereupon it and the rest of the complex was sold to the local Roman Catholic diocese as the new home of Mount Saint Joseph Academy, which in turn closed three years later. Subsequent purchaser Ellicott Development has since leased the building to a succession of charter schools, of which Primary Hall is only the most recent. Describing itself as "a public, tuition-free charter school designed to serve Buffalo's East Side" with "a quality, inclusive, and personalized education that develops [its] students into well-rounded leaders with a strong ethical compass", Primary Hall opened to kindergarten and first-grade students in time for the 2021-2022 school year and will gradually expand to enroll students up to the fifth grade.