St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Church

St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Church /
Delaine Waring African Methodist Episcopal Church
688 Swan at Hagerman streets, Buffalo, NY

The Hydraulics boasted several churches which served the spiritual needs of area residents.

St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Church is the oldest surviving church and ecclesiastic building in the neighborhood. It was established in the Hydraulics area by a group of German immigrants (including local butcher John F. Kamman) and the congregation constructed a stately brick Romanesque Revival church building and school at 688 Swan Street in 1868-1869. - p. 10

St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Church is a vaulted one-story red brick Romanesque Building with a simple end-gabled rectilinear plan with a prominent tower at the south-east corner of the building. This relatively small building features rounded arched stained glass windows, grouped as a set of three at the south end facing Swan Street.

Adjacent to the building is a small one-story gable end brick building with a single round-ached window visible. This building once served as the parlor and Sunday School rooms for the church. St. Matthew’s Church is among the oldest extant buildings in the Hydraulics neighborhood, and was established as a result of the mid-nineteenth-century immigration of Germans into the area. Constructed 1868-69, tower later altered. - F p 12

- The Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood - Nomination for Listing on the State and National Register of Historic Places By Jennifer Walkowski for Clinton Brown Company Architecture/Rebuild

[On 19 January, 1868] twenty-three people committed to joining this German language congregation. On 26 January, they organized a building committee to secure the necessary land and build a house of worship. The residents of the area established the congregation as an independent neighborhood church. It never functioned as a mission of another congregation nor was it started by any denominational group.

[The congregation moved in 1961.]

- James Napora, History of Matthew’s German Evangelical Church

St. Matthew’s German Evangelical Church is a vaulted one-story red brick Romanesque Building with a simple end-gabled rectilinear plan with a prominent tower at the south-east corner of the building. This relatively small building features rounded arched stained glass windows, grouped as a set of three at the south end facing Swan Street.

Adjacent to the building is a small one-story gable end brick building with a single round-ached window visible. This building once served as the parlor and Sunday School rooms for the church.

St. Matthew’s Church is among the oldest extant buildings in the Hydraulics neighborhood, and was established as a result of the mid-nineteenth-century immigration of Germans into the area. Constructed 1868-69, tower later altered.

- Section F, p. 12, The Hydraulics/Larkin Neighborhood - Nomination for Listing on the State and National Register of Historic Places by Jennifer Walkowski for Clinton Brown Company Architecture/Rebuild

2014 photos