File:Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church - fmr First Trinity Lutheran Church - Buffalo, New York - 20200609.jpg

English: Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, 665 Michigan Avenue, Buffalo, New York, June 2020. A relatively rare example of Italianate church architecture, the design of this relatively low and sprawling building (built in 1868 by an unknown architect) includes a prominent raking corbel table under the roofline of the front gable, round-arched windows throughout the building including decorative stone window heads over the ones on the Michigan Avenue façade, and a striking Modernist bell tower added only a few years ago. For nearly the first century of its existence, the building was home to First Trinity Lutheran Church, a congregation with a most interesting history: it traces its origins to modern-day Germany, where King Frederick William III of Prussia forcibly merged the Lutheran church in that country into the Reformed Church and persecuted those congregations who resisted. First Trinity was founded by the union of two groups of religious refugees, from Silesia and Alsace respectively, who crossed paths in 1839 while in Hamburg awaiting onward passage to America. The Alsatians seceded from the congregation soon after its arrival in Buffalo and went on to found Trinity Old Lutheran Church; the Silesian remnant took on the name First Trinity, worshiping first in rented spaces, then in a no-longer-extant church on William Street beginning c. 1840, then, after welcoming back to the fold a faction of dissenters from the Alsatian congregation, set to work on the building seen here. First Trinity went on to become among the most prominent Lutheran churches in the city, giving birth through schisms in the congregation not only to Trinity Old Lutheran but also Emmaus, Calvary English Evangelical, and Gethsemane Lutheran Churches. The congregation moved to the suburbs in 1958, following most of its members, and sold the building to its current occupants at that time.