File:House of Mercy Evangelical Ministries - fmr Brownstone Pentecostal Tabernacle, Mount Olive Baptist Church - Buffalo, New York - 20210930.jpg

English: House of Mercy Evangelical Ministries, 629 East Delavan Avenue at Chelsea Place, Buffalo, New York, September 2021. With Greco-Roman inspired detailing such as a symmetrical façade and a front entrance flanked by engaged Doric columns and topped consecutively by an architrave, arched stained-glass window with geometric tracery, and a broken pediment at the parapeted roofline, this unusual example of Neoclassical church architecture was the work of A. E. Tunmore, a building contractor who at the time was also a member of the Brownstone Pentecostal Tabernacle, the nondenominational entity for which the building was erected. Founding pastor Walter Palmer saw Brownstone not as a congregation in its own right, in direct competition with the established churches of the area, but rather a gateway organization that would feed previously nonpracticing individuals with the "fervor of Christian enthusiasm", evangelizing them into membership in a full-fledged church and along the way curing the moral problems inherent in the area. Known also as the Church of the Whole Gospel, the congregation was in existence from 1928 until 1967, after which point the building served successively as home to Mount Olive Baptist Church (1967-1999; they're now located two blocks east of here in a large modern building near the corner of Grider Street), Everlasting Life Church of God in Christ (1999-2007), and Abundant Life Church of God in Christ (2007-c. 2018) before being purchased by its present occupant.