File:First Lutheran Church, Jamestown, New York - 20210427.jpg

English: One of the most imposing buildings in Jamestown, First Lutheran is an example of the Richardsonian Romanesque style of architecture that's tempered to adapt to a design whose prominent vertical orientation is more reminiscent of Gothicism. Sporting an exterior of rock-hewn Medina sandstone and a classic basilican floor plan, the front gable of the steeply-pitched roof crowns a tripartite façade that consists of a recessed central portion - wherein a small wheel window is flanked by a pair of narrower round-arched windows, all of which are crowned with semicircular window heads - and a pair of imposing square-footprinted towers, the taller of which stands on the east and sports engaged corner buttresses, a quartet of curved pinnacles at each upper corner, and a pyramidal roof; the other with a polygonal, chamfered-cornered belfry and gabled dormers adorning the spire. The entrance - where Richardsonian principles are applied in their purest form - comes in the form of a flat-roofed porch, wherein a pair of Syrian arches are separated by a stout column with stylized Corinthian capital. The building was designed by prominent Jamestown-based architect Aaron Hall and constructed over a nine-year period from 1892 through 1901, but the congregation is significantly older: First Lutheran traces its history to 1856, roughly contemporaneous with the initial genesis of Jamestown's Swedish-American community, which for several years before that had been making do with informal services held in private homes by itinerant preachers. Initially a small congregation that met in a simple wood-framed chapel, an uptick in immigration from Sweden to the U.S. beginning in the years after the Civil War swelled its ranks so drastically that larger quarters, i.e. the present building, were needed. Services began to be held bilingually in 1917 and were being conducted exclusively in English by 1953. The Building-Structure Inventory Form filed in 1976 with the New York State Division for Historic Preservation indicates that First Lutheran was still one of the United States' largest congregations of the denomination at that time, and though membership has declined significantly since then, the original flock remains in existence.