File:St. Peter's United Church of Christ, West Seneca, New York - 20230203.jpg

English: St. Peter's United Church of Christ, 1475 Orchard Park Road, West Seneca, New York, February 2023. Built in 1857, this is a fine example of the simplified vernacular wood-frame Gothic Revival church architecture that was then popular in rural America. The white clapboard siding is punctuated by tall, narrow windows and a central entrance, all topped with sharply pointed arches. However, the prominent vertical orientation is undoubtedly best exemplified in the tower, which was added in 1870 and sports a tall, shingle-faced spire whose base is ringed by a quartet of gablets. The side elevations feature rows of windows that are similarly tall and narrow but square-topped, albeit with pointed arches incorporated into the design of the stained glass. Not only is this the oldest extant church building in West Seneca, but the congregation is second in age only to Trinity Lutheran on Reserve Road: what was originally known as St. Peter's United Evangelical Church traces its history back to 1852, when the Rev. Dr. Otto Burger, rector of the identically named church on the Near East Side of the neighboring city of Buffalo, sought to establish a mission to tend to the spiritual needs of a growing community of German-American farmers who had begun settling the land that had until recently had belonged to the Seneca Nation as their Buffalo Creek Reservation. Rev. Burger and a series of subsequent short-tenured pastors who commuted from Buffalo were soon succeeded by the church's first resident pastor, the Rev. John Nicholas Saul, who oversaw the construction of the present building and the establishment of the parochial school. The church soon settled into what the Buffalo Evening News described in an article on its centennial anniversary as "years of uninterrupted progress" that "[bore] witness to what a Christian congregation can accomplish when peace and harmony prevail"; a period characterized by continuous growth of the congregation, a languid progression of beloved and long-serving pastors, and frequent renovations and expansions of the church building: the interior was expanded and renovated in 1870, a parish hall was constructed in 1931, and most impressive of all, a large Religious Education Building designed by Buffalo architects Shelgren & Whitman was appended to the rear of the church in 1959. Though the boom years are over, St. Peter's - now an affiliate of the United Church of Christ - remains an active and welcoming faith community today.