File:Adam Plewacki Post No. 799, American Legion, Buffalo, New York - 20200812.jpg

English: The Adam Plewacki Post No. 799 of the American Legion, 385 Paderewski Drive at Memorial Drive, Buffalo, New York, August 2020. Named in honor of the first Buffalo resident to die in the First World War, a second-generation Polish-American who gave his life in the trenches somewhere in France two years before its founding, the post was established in 1919 and spent the initial period of its history meeting in rented space at the Dom Polski and Polish Union Hall. Then, in 1940 - correctly predicting both America's eventual entry into World War II and a surge in the organization's ranks after the conclusion of said war - the post's leadership purchased a plot of land on what was then called Lindbergh Drive, in the shadow of the Central Terminal, on which it would set about building its permanent home in 1948. Architect Joseph Fronczak designed for them one of Buffalo's first Modernist-style buildings, with a flat roof and simplified design, for which the ribbon was cut in 1950. The lettering on the sign, engraved in low relief above the entrance, sports a typeface typical of its era. In the decades thereafter, Plewacki found itself among the largest American Legion posts in the country, playing host to a jam-packed calendar of events not only for members but also Buffalo's Polish-American community at large. The post still exists, though with the passage of time it's much diminished in size and membership and no longer owns the building outright: it's now property of the City of Buffalo, who uses it also to house community services operated by the Matt Urban Hope Center.