File:SENSES Foundation - fmr St. Peter's German Evangelical Church - Buffalo, New York - 20210619.jpg

English: SENSES Foundation, 360 Genesee Street at Hickory Street, Buffalo, New York, June 2021. A majestic vision in Victorian Gothicism executed by local architect Milton Beebe, the eyes hardly know where to focus when laid on this resplendent design: the triple entrance with its compound Gothic arches, crocketed gablets topped with finials, and the elegant trefoil- and quaterfoil-patterned stained glass in the tympana; the trefoil-topped windows and handsome raking corbel tables on the side elevations and the cross gable respectively; the stout central tower with its stepped corner buttresses which once was the pedestal for a nearly 200-foot spire, removed in 1991 for reasons of structural deterioration. The German inscription above the entrance (VER. EV. ST. PETERSKIRCHE) reflects the language used in the church services in those early days. One of the first congregations founded to serve the German-American community that began to coalesce on the east side of the city in the same era, St. Peter's traces its history to the founding of the German Evangelical Society of Buffalo in 1830. Meeting originally in a rented schoolhouse, the congregation purchased the plot of land depicted here in 1834 with the financial help of local businessman and real estate investor Jabez Goodell and, uniquely, spent the next 43 years worshiping in buildings sold or donated to them by other churches and physically moved to the site. First was the former Niagara Street Methodist Church, donated to the Germans in 1835 upon the former's move to a larger home; this building was supplanted in 1850 by the former St. Paul's Episcopal Church once located where the cathderal of the same name stands today, which they enlarged in 1856 but ultimately still proved too small for their needs. This, in turn, was replaced by the present building for which ground was broken in 1877, and which was dedicated the following year. The congregation's longevity was surprising considering that the surrounding neighborhood was once of the first to fall victim to demographic changes and urban disinvestment in the mid- (and to some degree even in the early) 20th century; it was not until 1974 when what was by now called St. Peter's United Church of Christ merged with a neighboring congregation to form New Covenant United Church of Christ, which worships today in a modern building on Clinton Street. As for this building, it's been home since 2011 to the SENSES Foundation (a somewhat unwieldy acronym standing for "sane mind, education, nutrition and health, social skills, economics and entrepreneurship, and social responsibility"), a not-for-profit tutoring and mentoring program for teens and young adults.