File:St. Aloysius Gonzaga RC Church, Cheektowaga, New York - 20210220.jpg

English: St. Aloysius Gonzaga Roman Catholic Church, 157 Cleveland Drive at Highview Road, Cheektowaga, New York, February 2021. A work of noted local architect Mortimer Murphy, "St. Al's" takes the Late Gothic Revival template that was fairly typical of mid-20th century Buffalo-area church architecture and adds a healthy admixture of the Tudor Revival. Representing the former style are narrow lancet windows flanking the entrance, stone-capped buttresses along the sides, low parapets crowning both the front and side gables, and of course, an enormous Gothic-arched window dominating the façade whose stained glass comes in contrasting designs of dalle-de-verre and diamond-shaped latticework; meanwhile the Tudor influence comes into play in the low compound segmental arch over the entrance and the Gibbs surrounds in light gray stone trim around the entrance and windows, which present a subtle color contrast vis-à-vis the beige brick of the exterior walls. One of the first Catholic congregations in Cheektowaga to owe its establishment to the suburbanization process that was incipient at the time of its founding and would grow to tidal-wave proportions over the next decades, it was in 1940 when St. Aloysius' parish boundaries were carved out of those of St. James, St. Benedict, and Christ the King. Founding priest Rev. Walter Gonter (1891-1953) said Mass in a temporary frame structure for ten months until the present building was dedicated in 1941. The growth of the parish was so rapid - it had doubled in size by 1952, to 1,800 families - that expansions to the building became necessary almost immediately. The parochial school was opened in 1948; new sacristies added in 1952 and '53 allowed for enlargement of the worship space, and finally a convent for the Sisters of Saint Joseph who staffed the school was erected in 1962. The nearby Bishop Neumann High School, too, was founded in 1959 largely to serve the continuing Catholic educational needs of the graduates of St. Aloysius' parochial school. As elsewhere in the Buffalo diocese, parish membership tallies plateaued in 1980 and soon began to drop, in tune with both the changing demographics of the innermost ring of suburbia and the secularization of American society as a whole. Despite the closure of its parochial school in 2007 due to declining enrollment and its merger with the neighboring parish of Immaculate Heart of Mary two years later, St. Aloysius remains a relatively vibrant Catholic parish serving the spiritual needs of the residents of northwest Cheektowaga and northeast Buffalo.