File:Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church aka Grape Street Baptist Church - fmr St. Paul's Evangelical Church - Buffalo, New York - 20200601.jpg

English: Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church, 53 Grape Street at Virginia Street, Buffalo, New York, June 2020. This 1875 brick church is a good example of Gothic Revival architecture as typified by its era: not only are pointed arches ubiquitous on the façade (crowning the double louvered window on the tower and atop the trios of windows on the main portion of the building), but the vaguely lozenge-shape louvered half-window just under the front gable is an interesting testament to the style as well. The Modernist addition to the south side of the building (off the right-hand margin) was designed by architect Robert Traynham Coles and dates to 1989, which also seems to be approximately when the steeple was removed from atop the tower. The building got its start as home of St. Paul's Evangelical Church, a congregation that began as a Sunday school and mission church run by First Evangelical on Sycamore Street and became a full-fledged congregation in 1890; uniquely, services were held in German until 1920 but Sunday school classes were conducted in English right from the outset so as to attract a younger and more assimilated attendance. The Evangelical congregation vacated the building in 1963, whereupon it began the second and more prominent phase of its history, as Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church, whose pastor, Rev. Herbert V. Reid, transformed it into a local nexus for the Civil Rights Movement second only to the Michigan Street Baptist Church. The building was named a City of Buffalo landmark in 2019.