File:Iglesia El Calvario Asambleas de Dios - fmr Zion German Methodist Episcopal Church - Buffalo, New York - 20210503.jpg

English: Iglesia El Calvario, 221 East Street, Buffalo, New York, May 2021. With its ponderous massing, stout pyramidal-roofed tower, and rusticated stone quoins and voussoirs framing the main entrance, this is an interesting if modestly-scaled example of Romanesque Revival ecclesiastical architecture that distinguishes itself with the unusual shingle siding that covers the upper reaches of the portion of the façade away from the tower, with a trios of round-arched stained-glass windows arrayed under a gable with a prominent soffit return to the left. The interior is even more exquisite, with elegant original woodwork and a roof supported by a decorative hammerbeam truss with finials carved in the shape of a woman's head. The church was originally home to Zion German Methodist Episcopal Church, a mission congregation of the now-demolished Mortimer Street German Methodist Episcopal Church on the Near East Side that was founded in 1866 to minister to the rapidly urbanizing Black Rock section that had been annexed to the city only about a decade prior. The frame chapel that served as their original church was already becoming overcrowded when it was destroyed by fire during a lightning storm in August 1888, precipitating the construction of the present building on the same site which was dedicated in July of the following year in the wake of a seven-month, $15,000 construction process. The church went by several different names over the course of its existence - others included Second German Methodist Episcopal, East Street Methodist Episcopal, and finally Ripley Memorial Methodist - before the congregation's dissolution in 1998. The building has been in the possession of its current owners, an Assemblies of God congregation holding Spanish-language services for a neighborhood that is now majority-Puerto Rican and Dominican, since 2016.