5/24/2014

(another) Humboldt Parkway Church For Sale

The congregation of Cedar Grove Missionary Baptist church has departed the city for their new home a few expressway exits East in Cheektowaga, a six acre campus on Maryvale Road. The Challenger wrote about the congregation's 2010 move in a November 2011 issue, here. I only recently noticed the for sale sign and called to check on the asking price. The phone number is disconnected.

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Constructed by the city's rapidly expanding German population, the Emmanual Evangelical Reformed Church opened for religious services in 1895. The towering Humboldt Parkway church replaced a wooden chapel that was first constructed in 1883.

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This is the second house of worship now available for sale along the "bathtub" section of the Kensington Expressway. Mike Puma recently wrote about the $300,000 price drop on St. Francis de Sales church across the great divide from Cedar Grove.

Leaving behind and abandoning legacy houses of worship is not new.  It happens frequently on the East Side. fixBuffalo readers may recall the plight of 41 Spruce Street and its standing demolition order, now missing stained glass windows and inviting (now open) front door.  This is the story that's unfolding when some African-American congregations decided to leave the inner city and move on. The tragic development unfolding right now at Sacred Heart Church on Emslie Street is quickly becoming the last chapter in a story that is becoming all too familiar.

The future of this Humboldt Parkway landmark remains uncertain.

related posts: fixing the Kensington (part 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
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2 comments:

Buffalo_Resurrection said...

I have been invited, on numerous occasions, to attend mass at the Chapel at Crosspoints which I also, incidentally, see every time I enter the I-990 off of Millersport Hwy.

I think what I find more abhorrent than the congregation of self-proclaimed “Christians” is the fact the building is nothing more than a big-box with a great deal of window dressing erected on land that should have remained either virgin soil or used for farming purposes.

Meanwhile, building s like this et.al. languish in the heart of urban decay because the “Christians” are too “scared” to enter into the scary city of Buffalo.

A true Christian would maintain these homes of worship in an effort to maintain an anchor building in these blighted neighborhoods instead of hiding-out in their Amherst McMasions patting themselves on the back and pontificating to people like me who actually have a spiritual belief but don’t belong to any particular denomination.

Anonymous said...

You are better than everyone else, you have it all figured out too.

Dude they are just buildings, here or there big or small boxes or fancy cathedrals, just a place for people to get together and pray, nothing special. The building is not the church!