File:Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry - fmr Trinity Evangelical Church - Buffalo, New York - 20220626.jpg

English: Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry, 115 Gold Street, Buffalo, New York, June 2022. Though fronted with Modernist additions, the main and oldest part of this church complex is obviously the wood-framed Gothic Revival structure seen at right, an 1887 work of local architect Louis Saenger. Here we see the style in a very simple iteration, with an austere façade perforated only by paired pointed-arched windows. The spire, projecting slightly from the base of the tower above the louvered windows, tapers to a crowning finial and stands 119 feet above street level. The church was built as home of Trinity Evangelical Church, a German-speaking congregation based in what was rapidly developing into a multiethnic neighborhood on the far East Side of the city then known as Churchyard Farms (after the land's previous owner) and now called Lovejoy. After a survey of area German speakers solidly confirmed the need for a new church to handle the spiritual needs of what would soon be a rapidly growing neighborhood, a consortium of various Evangelical pastors from around the city purchased the lot seen here in 1883 and erected a small chapel, which was duly outgrown and replaced by the present structure four years later. Trinity became an English-language congregation in 1922, witnessed a number of denominational mergers in the 20th century (it was known as Trinity Evangelical & Reformed from 1934 through 1959 and later affiliated with the United Church of Christ), continued growing (the aforementioned Modernist annex, originally housing the church school, was built in 1968 to a design by Shelgren, Patterson & Marzec), and finally dissolved in 2010 due to changing neighborhood demographics. Spirit of Truth Urban Ministry, a nondenominational congregation, owns the property today.