The Saint Louis Roman Catholic Church is the oldest Catholic congregation in the city. In 1829, Louis Stephen LeCouteulx de Chaumont, a Buffalo resident of Noble French Ancestry, deeded a plot of land at the corner of Main Street and Edward Street for the first Catholic church in Buffalo.

The first church structure erected on the site was made of wood and was completed in 1832. A new brick church building replaced the one made of wood in 1843, but it was destroyed by fire in 1885. The fire originated in the city’s First Music Hall, which was located across the street.

From 1886 to 1889, a new sandstone building was designed and constructed by architects William Schickel (1850–1907) and Issac E. Ditmars (1850–1934) in the continental Gothic style of the fourteenth century. The building still stands today. 

The large clock on the church’s façade is a Seth Thomas Clock. The clock was a gift of Judge Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) and is a memorial to two firemen who were killed in the fire of the congregation’s last building.

For more historical information, visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s channel on Historypin.