File:Christ United Methodist Church, Amherst, New York - 20221017.jpg

English: Christ United Methodist Church, 350 Saratoga Road at Harlem Road, Amherst, New York, October 2022. Founded in September 1949, Christ Methodist was described in the pages of the Buffalo Evening News as "the first new Methodist church in the Buffalo District in a generation", and one of many new ones to sprout on the city's periphery in the wake of the postwar migration of the middle class to the suburbs. Soon after the founding, a parsonage was built whose basement was converted into a temporary chapel where services were held for the first year. Shelgren & Whitman's plans for the main portion of what was then intended as a three-building complex - that seen at far left, formerly a 224-seat sanctuary and now used as a fellowship hall and administrative offices - were finalized in April 1950, with ground broken the following August, the cornerstone laid in November, and dedication in June of the next year. A fine example of late-period Colonial Revival architecture that was favored particularly by the firm as well as in the era's church architecture in general. A simplified and stylized take on the Classical temple front is achieved by the shallow pitch of the front-gabled roof - an ersatz pediment - combined with the brick pilaster strips that separate the small-paned six-over-six sash windows. The roof was once crowned by a cupola, now removed. A school building, not visible from this angle, followed in 1954. The continued growth of the congregation was behind the decision to expand the church with a newer and larger sanctuary, connected to the original building by a wide breezeway and seen at right here, which was designed by the same firm and dedicated in 1962.