English: St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, 2368 Eggert Road, Tonawanda, New York, November 2022. Dedicated in January 1961, this was the last major work of Buffalo-based architect Louis Greenstein, and a fine demonstration of his late-career skill in balancing an embrace of the austere sleekness of the International Style with subtle hints of the Classicist tropes that he'd favored earlier in his career: note the arcade of pillar-supported segmental arches that fronts the south side of the façade, to the right of the entrance, as well as the cornice and parapet lining the flat roof to the left. The rough fieldstone veneer on the furthest-right face of the building affords an interesting contrast in color and texture, as well. As the viewer may have guessed from the stone Star of David engraving that underlies the cross to the left of the entrance, the building originally housed a synagogue: Temple Beth El, the oldest in Western New York, whose history traces back to 1847, only 12 years after the arrival of its first Jewish settler, one L. H. Flersheim. From humble beginnings, Beth El's growth was rapid: within three years they had established a Jewish cemetery and school as well as cut the ribbon on their first purpose-built synagogue, on Pearl Street at the present site of the Main Place Mall. The congregation bounced around a series of locations in Buffalo over the ensuing century, leaving the increasingly congested downtown area in 1874 in favor of a Near East Side location, and finally
Richmond Avenue in 1911. The post-World War II mass exodus of middle-class families from Buffalo to its surrounding suburbs affected the local Jewish community equally as much as any other; however, the temple's shift out of the city was rather gradual: it was in 1957 when Beth El purchased the land on which this property sits, yet when their building plans were unveiled two years later, the new campus was intended only as a suburban branch location of the Hebrew school. Nonetheless, after the construction of a series of substantial additions, it was reinaugurated in 1966 as the new home of the temple itself. The building continued as such for the remainder of the 20th century and into the beginning of the 21st, also welcoming the members of Temples Shaarey Zedek and Beth Israel and Congregation B'nai Shalom after the mergers of 2008, 2011, and 2017, respectively. However, the end of the line came in 2018, when what was by now called Temple Beth Tzedek moved to
B'nai Shalom's former home in the neighboring town of Amherst. Thereupon, they sold their former synagogue to St. Bartholomew's Anglican Church, which had previously met on Brighton Road in what's now the
Episcopal Diocese Ministry Center.