File:Parish Commons - fmr English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer - Buffalo, New York - 20210429.jpg

English: Parish Commons, 656 Elmwood Avenue at West Ferry Street, Buffalo, New York, April 2021. Renovated into an office complex in 1986, this is one of the earliest examples in Buffalo of the adaptive reuse of a former church building; though initially the English Gothic-styled design furnished by architect George C. Gould remained in essentially its original state, a devastating fire in 2007 necessitated extensive reconstruction of the façade, to which much of the current iteration of the building owes its appearance. To wit: the building's L-shaped floor plan (wrapping around a corner parking lot) remains intact; the rear terminal end of the building facing Elmwood Avenue (left background) retains its random-coursed ashlar façade, small, Gibbs surround-framed windows, and raking parapet wall; the gablet-topped buttresses on the side elevation at right similarly remain intact. However, what was once the main façade at right, where a trademark oversized Gothic-arched stained glass window once loomed above a gabled entrance vestibule, has been completely obliterated by modern additions. The building was built to house of the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer, which had been founded seventeen years earlier by members of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church as a mission church to minister to the residents of what was then a still-semirural but fast-growing district of the city. Accordingly, the flock soon outgrew the small wood-framed chapel built for them at the corner of Highland Avenue, purchasing in 1911 the plot of land where the current church stands and kicking off a two-year construction process during which they temporarily held services at the Richmond Avenue Methodist Episcopal Church. The Church of the Redeemer remained in the building until their dissolution in 1985.