File:First United Methodist Church, Akron, New York - 20221216.jpg

English: Akron First United Methodist Church, 7 Church Street at John Street, Akron, New York, December 2022. Described by the Buffalo Evening News as "the cradle of Western New York Methodism", this oldest existing Methodist congregation west of the Genesee River (and second oldest of any denomination in Erie County) meets in a building that fronts on the east side of Russell Park in the village center, on a plot donated to them by village founding father Jonathan Russell. The church building as it exists today is the product of five distinct stages of construction:

• the original portion of the building (right) dates to 1840 and is a good example of the vernacular Greek Revival architecture then popular in the American interior. Note the frontal gable of its low pitched roof, which is styled into an approximation of a Classical pediment, and the requisite façadal symmetry and large windows.

• Appended in 1867 to the north side of the above was a twenty-foot expansion to the sanctuary, seen here just right of center between the two wooden pilaster strips. A no-longer-extant tower was also built at this time.

• Both of the above were gutted by a devastating fire in 1942 which reduced the church to its original stone walls, leading to a full rebuild of the interior that was completed two years later to the tune of $60,000. 1947 saw the installation of a new organ, which had originally been located at the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Larkin Company Administration Building in nearby Buffalo.

• An Education Building was added to the east side of the complex in 1959. Designed in a Modernist style by the Buffalo-based firm of Shelgren & Whitman, it's visible at far left in the background of this photo but here is a better view.

• The newest phase of construction (left) occurred in 2003 and comprises the north wing of the building. Though faced in brick, its New Classical architecture complements the earlier portions of the complex, and the design is characterized by a recessed entrance flanked by round arched windows.

Akron First can trace its history back to the first decade of the 19th century, when the village was a stop on the itinerary of the "circuit rider" preachers of the Methodist Church's newly minted Genesee Conference, who traveled through a territory of frontier wilderness the size of New Jersey holding services in whatever spaces could be found. In Akron, those services were generally held in a log cabin that had earlier served as a schoolhouse, which was replaced with a permanent home upon the church's formal establishment in 1837.