File:St. Luke's AME Zion Church - fmr Central Church of Christ - Buffalo, New York - 20200623.jpg

English: St. Luke's African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, 314 East Ferry Street at Lonsdale Road, Buffalo, New York, June 2020. Designed in an English Gothic style by architect Frank Spangenberg, the building's design is at first blush typical of ecclesiastical architecture of the day (the segmental-arched entrance and side buttresses are, if anything, unusually simplified for a building of such ample dimensions, and the large front window with bar tracery is a textbook feature of the style), but creative touches begin to make themselves apparent before too long: the steepleless tower on the east side of the building sports pinnacled crenellation, for instance. The building originally served as the second and final home of the Central Church of Christ, a congregation that traces its history back to 1888, when the Richmond Avenue Church of Christ, which was famous for its zeal in establishing mission churches to minister to other areas of the city, founded one in the Masten Park neighborhood. Known initially as the Jefferson Avenue Church of Christ, the congregation moved to the newly established Hamlin Park neighborhood in 1923 and took on their new name at that time to better reflect their geographic location within the city. In 1957, the building became home to St. Luke's AME Zion Church, a church with deep roots in Buffalo's African-American community, dating back to a 1901 schism among the members of Bethel AME Church springing from a dispute over the question of whether to relocate; ironically, St. Luke's decision to relocate to Hamlin Park from their former location on the Near East Side led to another schism.