Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church Complex, Buffalo New York

Date added: December 20, 2024

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The Corpus Christi Church complex of buildings in Buffalo, New York, is a Roman Catholic urban parish created to serve the needs of a Polish-American immigrant neighborhood during the first half of the twentieth century. Consisting of a church, rectory, and monastery, convent, two social halls and school (now demolished), the parish buildings were erected by the Franciscan Order and designed by the Buffalo architectural firm of Schmill & Gould and the successor firms carried on by Karl G. Schmill, Jr., after his father's death in 1914. Corpus Christi is one of several large ecclesiastical complexes that architecturally dominate this neighborhood of modest working class residences on the East Side of Buffalo. Today the area has lost most of its former Polish-American ethnic makeup and is one of the most economically disadvantaged in the city. The church complex has, since its completion, stood as a widely recognized symbol of Buffalo's Polish-American heritage.

History of the Founding of the Parish.

Polish immigration into Buffalo began slowly, as a trickle. Most immigrating Poles choose to continue on their way to larger Polish communities in Chicago and Detroit. The Buffalo census in 1870 estimated around 160 Poles living in Buffalo, but this number began growing slowly as the Polish community sought a place to worship with their own cultural values. In 1873, construction on the original St. Stanislaus Roman Catholic church began. This church became known as the "Mother Church of Polonia", a focal point of Buffalo's Polish culture: More than metaphorical, the church's importance was visually evident; surrounding Street. Stanislaus 400 homes were built soon after the church's completion. The rise in housing happened thanks in part to a crafty real estate developer, Joseph Bork, who purchased and developed the land surrounding the Mother church. From 1886 to 1893, three new parish churches were built: St. Adalbert on Stanislaus Street (1886), St. John Kanty on Broadway (1890), and the Transfiguration Church on Sycamore Street (1893). Buffalo's Polish community grew, and with it grew the need to remember common Polish roots. The parish churches were imperative to keeping Polish traditions alive. By 1907 Buffalo's Broadway-Fillmore area was a Polish city within a city, with approximately 80,000 Poles living in the area, making Buffalo's "Polonia" one of the largest Polish communities in the country.

The community continued to expand in affluence and size. In 1898, Bishop James E. Quigley invited the Franciscan Order to come to Buffalo to aid the increasing Polish public in serving their faith. Reverend Hyacinth Fudzinski came from Syracuse to help get the fledgling parish started. The first building to be called Corpus Christi was an old tavern on the corner of Clark Street and Kent Street, but this was only temporary. In 1889, construction began on a three story brick building to better serve the Polish population. The first floor was the church, with seating for a thousand people. The second floor was the parish school, and the third floor served as a social and religious meeting space. Father Fudzinski and Father Baran blessed it on May 29^th, 1898.

The rectory, originally a small cottage on the property, was rebuilt to be a three-and-a-half-story brick building with a Mansard roof situated at the southeast corner of Clark Street and Kent Street. The architect Carl Schmill designed the building, which incorporated a friary or monastery; this was the beginning of what would develop into a very long relationship between Corpus Christi and the Schmill firms. Construction of the combined rectory and friary began in 1900 and was completed 1907. In 1905, the firm of Schmill & Gould likewise designed the convent for the Franciscan sisters. It was similar in appearance to the earlier building.

Father Fudzinski was hugely influential in getting the fledgling parish on sturdy legs. In 1905, Father Fudzinski formed the Polish province of Minor Conventuals, dedicated to administering the Polish faith to immigrant communities in need of guidance. Father Fudzinski also brought the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph to Buffalo to teach in the parish school. Parish churches were centers of education, each having its own parish school that taught the Polish language and culture. As educators, nurturers, and religious figures, the Franciscan Sisters would become an integral part of Polonia's development.

Construction of the Church of Corpus Christi

An article in the Buffalo Commercial on November 13^th, 1901, announced that Carl Schmill had prepared plans for "a splendid new edifice to be built in the parish of Corpus Christi." Having a seating capacity of 1800 people, the building was to be erected of brick with Medina sandstone trim. Although the newspaper reported that ground breaking would take place the following spring, construction did not actually begin until 1907. (The church was finished in 1909.) The 1901 plans are lost, therefore, beyond substituting brownstone for brick for the exterior walls one does not know what changes Schmill might have made later to his first design. Blueprints of plans from which the present church was constructed are dated 1907 and signed with the firm name of Schmill and Gould. (Schmill's partner at the time was George C. Gould [1873-1957].) One of the significant features of the interior was the use of decorative electric lights to illuminate the soffits of the sanctuary arch and nave arcades. Light bulbs outlining buildings had been a dramatic feature of the Pan American Exposition held in Buffalo during the spring and summer of 1901. Whether or not Schmill had already contemplated such extensive use of decorative lighting in his church plan of that year remains unknown. But surely, the example of the brilliant Exposition, whose organizers wished to call attention to the abundance of electricity being generated by a new power plant at Niagara Falls, inspired Schmill to embellish Corpus Christi's interior with 11,000 light bulbs.

The church of Corpus Christi is a fine example of that form of Romanesque Revival ecclesiastical architecture that had its origin in the German Rundbogenstil ("round arch style"). The term came into fashion in the first quarter of the nineteenth-century due to the writings of the German architect Heinrich Huebsch. Huebsch promoted the tenth and eleventh century sandstone-arched architecture of the Rhineland as a more appropriate model for modern buildings in Northern Europe than the Classical marble buildings of Greece and Rome. Most closely associated with Munich, the style became popular in Germany, where Schmill studied architecture before coming to Buffalo; "by the start of the 1840s," affirms architectural historian Michael Lewis, "the Rundbogenstil was firmly ensconced in Germany's schools of architecture."

Huebsch also promoted the revival of mural decoration for churches, extolling the example of Early Christian basilicas, as had the radical group of early-nineteenth-century Romantic painters known as the Nazarenes. "The close alliance of mural painting and the Romanesque Revival in the United States," writes Kathleen Curran, the scholar of the Rundbogenstil, "had its origins in the Nazarenes in Rome." The combination of austere, round-arched stone exteriors with colorful, highly decorated interiors was characteristic of these Germanic-inspired churches. A representative example is Wilhelm Schickel's twin-towered Rundbogenstil abbey church of the Benedictine Archabbey of St. Vincent (1891-1905) in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, an institution sponsored by Ludwig 1 of Bavaria to spread the Catholic faith in the New World. Indeed, the style of architecture of St. Vincent's and Corpus Christi was closely associated with immigrant Roman Catholicism in America. Perhaps because of its Catholic origins, the Germanic Romanesque style drew scant attention from the American architectural establishment. "But even at its height," writes Curran, "Benedictine patronage of the Rundbogenstil and mural painting remained a subculture in the United States, separate from mainstream Anglo-American architectural developments. These magnificent buildings were never discussed in the national journals, nor were their architects and artists … considered major figures. Mainstream American culture was, after all, Protestant."

Decoration of the Church Interior

In 1923, soon after Father Fudzinski's retirement, the new pastor, Father Michael Cieslik undertook the task of elaborately decorating the interior of Corpus Christi. The church's interior was fairly basic since its completion in 1909, embellished only with simple geometric stenciling. The intricate electric lights must have had quite an impact against the plain backdrop of the church, but once the decorative elements were completed, no one would call the spectrum of religious paintings and sculpture that now filled Corpus Christi simple. The clerestory walls were ornamented with six large paintings representing the shrines of Mary in Poland. The original altar was replaced by a new high altar that features a central tabernacle sheltering a statue of the Sacred Heart. To either side, two smaller tabernacles contain statues of Saints Peter and Paul. Behind the altar, appear painted images of angels holding inscriptions with the names of the seven sacraments. Above, in the half dome of the apse, is a scene based closely on Raphael's celebrated sixteenth-century fresco of the Disputa. Dr. Mia Boynton, who, in the late 1980s, interviewed parishioners familiar with the history of the church, attributed the sanctuary paintings to the local Polish-American painter, Joseph Mazur (1897-1970). Mazur, who had studied at the Buffalo Fine Arts School and the Arts Student's League in New York, was the best known decorator of Polish-American churches in Buffalo. His first big commission came in 1923 from St. Stanislaus parish. Mazur's chief work for Corpus Christi is the apse mural. Like Raphael's Disputa in the Vatican, Mazur's rendition of the fresco represents scholars and saints in discussion of the meaning of the Eucharist (represented by a golden monstrance). In the clouds overhead, the twelve Apostles preside on either side of the Trinity. To better fit the iconography to the Franciscan Order that administered the parish at the time, Mazur added St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua to the group of theologians. Further asserting artistic license, he inserted the image of the shroud-wrapped body of Christ (a reference to the name of the church) beneath the altar in the center of the mural.

Between 1923 and 1926 stained glass from the world renowned European firm of Franz Mayer and Co. of Munich (the company's studio in New York City was responsible for the Corpus Christi windows) was installed within the church. The stained glass fills the windows of the nave with Franciscan and Polish narratives, such as, the stigmatization of St. Francis, the miracles of St. Anthony of Padua, and the legend of St. Hyacinth of Krakow. The rose window above the choir depicts Mary as the Queen of Heaven, as well as St. Cecelia (patron saint of music) and a choir of angels. The impressive pipe organ built in 1927 was made by the Radzewicz Organ Company of Milburn, New Jersey. Corpus Christi believed strongly in its Polish heritage and proudly features possibly the only pipe organ in Western New York designed by a Polish-American organ builder.

Once the windows and painted decorations were in place, the church had assumed the polychromatic splendor that surely had been envisioned for it from the beginning. The total ensemble of murals, stained glass, carved ornament, and sculpture clearly reflected the ideals of the Rundbogenstil ecclesiastical movement. Indeed, the colorful church interior of Corpus Christi invites comparison with such an earlier representative German churches as Leo von Klenze's Allerheiligenhofkirche and Gaertner's Ludwigskirche.

The church was designed to be powered by its own generator. The electrical system was upgraded in the extensive renovation that took place in 1948. One assumes that the original lights were low wattage, clear glass bulbs that cast a subtler illumination than that produced by the frosted white bulbs that are in place today.

Later Additions to the Parish Complex

The Franciscan Order at Corpus Christi was strengthened by the contribution of the Franciszkanki, the Franciscan Sisters. Father Fudzinski originally brought four Sisters from the German Franciscan region in New Jersey to help the nuns remain in America. Here they founded the religious order of the Franciscan Sisters of St. Joseph. From the advent of the original church of Corpus Christi in 1898, the Sisters provided numerous acts of love for Polonia. They reached out to all stages of life; in 1926, the Franciscan Sisters opened Immaculata Academy, and then later that year opened the St. Anthony's Home for the Aged. The Franciscan Sisters ran the parish school until 1988.

Corpus Christi influenced more than Polonia's religious structure, it was a functional and dynamic force in the community. In 1928, construction began on two new buildings for the parish. The Kolbe Center, or "Girls Club", was built across the street from the church at 174-176 Clark Street. Down the street, the Corpus Christi Club was built at 165 Sears Street. Carl Schmill and Sons designed both the two new facilities. These centers provided a number of different services to the Polish community. The Corpus Christi Club functioned as a place for social gatherings and was equipped with a bowling alley in the basement. The Kolbe Center housed a kindergarten on the first floor, and from the second floor Father Justin's Rosary Hour, a popular radio program, reached thousands of Polish homes across the nation. Father Justin's Rosary Hour is a weekly radio broadcast started in 1931 to maintain the bond between Catholicism and Polish immigrant culture in America. Today, Father Justin's Rosary Hour is the oldest continuing religious radio program broadcast in the native Polish language.

The Franciscan Order cared for the six structures that made up the Corpus Christi parish with the same dedication that they cared for the congregation that inhabited the space and gave life to the structures. The Franciscans lead the congregation through the building of the nearby Central Terminal railroad station in 1929, resulting in the displacement of approximately 250 parishioners. Nevertheless, they persevered, celebrating their 50^th year Golden Jubilee and 75^th year Diamond Jubilee in 1948, when the church was refurbished and two new bells were added to the towers.

Recent History of the Parish

In the 97 years that the Franciscans ministered to the East Side Polish-American community, many things have changed. By the early twenty-first century, the congregation of Corpus Christi had dwindled due to a number of factors, and the parish suffered greatly. In 1988, the grammar school was forced to close due to lack of enrollment. The three story red brick building was later demolished. In 1997, the Franciscan monks announced that they could no longer care for the parish and would withdraw from Buffalo. This served as a wake up call to Buffalo's Polish community. A number of concerned parishioners and community members organized the Friends of Corpus Christi to save the church. The bells at Corpus Christi rang for the first time in over ten years to raise awareness of the danger the church was in. In response to the pleas for help, the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit (the Pauline Fathers and Brothers) agreed to come from Doylestown, Pennsylvania, to take over care of the parish in 2004. The Franciscan Fathers stayed on for an additional six months until the Pauline Fathers and Brothers assumed responsibility for Corpus Christi. Since 2004, the Paulines, buoyed by the support of the parish community, have undertaken the care of the church, making repairs and renovations as far as their hand can carry them.

Site Description

Corpus Christi Roman Catholic Church Complex in Buffalo, New York, occupies the northern portion of the block bounded by Kent Street on the north, Paderewski Drive on the south, Clark Street on the west and Sears Street on the east. The group of buildings that make up the complex are the church (1901-1907), the rectory (1900), which also housed Franciscan monks), the convent (1905), the chapel (1905), the Kolbe Center (1928, originally the parish women's social club) at 174-176 Clark Street, and the Corpus Christi Club (1928, a recreational center and meeting facility at 165 Sears Street. All of these buildings were designed by the Buffalo architectural firm established by Carl Schmill (died 1914) in 1886. By 1906, he had formed with George C. Gould the firm of Schmill and Gould (whose name appears on the church building plans of 1907). In 1910, Carl Schmill formed with his son, Karl G. Schmill, Jr., the firm of Carl Schmill and Son. After the senior Schmill's death in 1914, the son continued to practice with various partners, including his brother William, until a few months before his death in May 1967.

The church complex has a ten-foot-high redish-brown sandstone wall, which extends along most of the northern and eastern perimeter of the property. This wall shelters the grounds behind the rectory (the north churchyard), the rear of the church, and the area behind the convent and chapel (the south churchyard), which consists of lawn dotted by mature trees and shrubs. A vacant lot on the south side of the property extends the width of the block between Clark and Sears Street. Surrounded by a tall chain-link fence, this open space is the former site of the parish school, erected in 1898. The area is presently an asphalt-paved parking lot. Like much of Buffalo's East Side, the surrounding neighborhood of modest, working class homes was built up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The church complex is located one block east of the Broadway Market (Buffalo's sole surviving public market) and a few blocks west of the former New York Central Terminal Complex and is encircled by one of the most ravaged urban areas in the city.

Corpus Christi Church

The Romanesque Revival style Corpus Christi Church was designed by the elder Carl Schmill and George C. Gould and is constructed of rusticated reddish-brown sandstone from the Hummelstown Brownstone Company's quarries in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. Built according to a traditional basilican plan, the church measures 90 feet wide by 175 feet deep. Following the orientation of medieval Christian churches, the architects placed the entrance in the west (on Clark Street) and the apse in the east (on Sears Street).

The imposing symmetrical facade features three round-arched entrances, a large central window above, and twin end towers. The lower level of the facade is distinguished from the upper part by being laid in rusticated ashlar. Above this level, which is marked by a stringcourse, the surface is laid in smaller blocks of random ashlar. The central portal stands out from the other two entrances by reason of its larger size and the presence of sculpted decoration. It has three archivolts carved with floral patterns springing from engaged jamb columns and a stone quatrefoil in the tympanum filled with stained glass. Two small lancet windows open in the wall to either side of the main portal. Above the central entrance, a large stained glass window rests on the stringcourse. This sizeable opening, which lights the choir loft and nave, is filled with six lancets below a rose window. In the peak of the gable, which is accentuated by a corbel table, is a trio of round-arched lancets, the central one of which is larger than the other two.

The most prominent features of the facade are the twin square bell towers that rise to 175 feet. The face of each tower has recessed panels with a roundel near the top. Clock faces fill three of the roundels that are visible from the street. Each tower terminates in a flat cornice above which rises an octagonal belfry. The belfries consist of round-arched louvered openings between stone piers that support copper-clad cupolas. Each cupola has eight round-headed dormers and lifts into the sky above the neighborhood a copper cross resting on a circular pedestal. Down below, at the level of the stringcourse, single round-arched windows in each tower light staircases leading to the choir loft from the narthex.

One enters the church first through the narthex located beneath the choir loft and then through one of the three swinging glass-paneled doors that give access to the nave. The nave is 90 feet high and separated from two 40-foot-high side aisles by a round-arched arcade resting on slender square compound piers. The pier capitals bear emblems of the faith carved by J. Shepperd Craig, an immigrant artisan from Scotland who had settled in Buffalo around the time that the church was constructed. Single clerestory windows above the center of each arcade arch light the nave, as well as two large electric chandeliers and rows of electric bulbs along the soffits of the arcade arches. (There are 11,000 lights in all throughout the church.) Large round-arched stained glass windows nearly fill the wall of each bay of the side aisles. Transverse arches above every other arcade pier divide the nave into three plaster groin-vaulted bays. Similar vaults cover each bay of the side aisles. At the east end of the nave, a triumphal arch (also fitted out with soffit lights) frames the semi-circular apse, which is raised several steps above the level of the nave floor. The side aisles terminate in altars on either side of the apse. Most of the floor area of the nave and aisles is taken up with wooden pews.

The decoration of the interior, other than the oil paintings of the Stations of the Cross that came from Rome in 1907, was undertaken between 1923 and 1926. Guided by Father Michael Cieslik of the Franciscan Order, the painting was probably carried out by Buffalo ecclesiastical artist Joseph Mazur and his crew. The present main altar and two side altars-composed of a composite of plaster and stone painted to resemble marble, were also installed at this time. The high altar has a statue of the Sacred Heart over the tabernacle flanked by SS. Peter and Paul. The two side altars present Franciscan themes. The chapel at the end of the north aisle has a painting of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen of the Franciscan Order with saints of the three Orders founded by St. Francis. Over the altar in the chapel at the end of the south aisle is a depiction of St. Joseph with Franciscan saints and martyrs.

The richest mural decorations are located in the apse. Adorning the walls of the sanctuary and serving as a background for the main altar are paintings of six shield-bearing angels. They represent the Sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction (anointing of the sick).

Above the high altar, the artists adapted Raphael's early 16th-century painting of the Disputa (a depiction of saints and theologians discussing ["disputing"] the nature and meaning of the communion host) to the semi-dome of the apse. In order to accommodate the namesake of the church, the painters introduced an image of the shroud-wrapped body of Christ beneath the altar in Raphael's fresco. They also added Saints Anthony and Francis to the throng, apparently in reference to the Franciscan Order that at the time administered they church.

Over the heads of the congregation, more paints provided additional inspiration to the faithful. The clerestory walls bear six large images, three on each side, representing shrines of the Virgin Mary in Poland. They are: Our Lady of Czestochowa in Jasna Gora; Blessed Mother of Tuchowa in Wilno; Our Lady of Calvary in Przemysl; and Blessed Mother of Lezajsk in Lezajsk. And hovering in the pale blue webbing of the ribbed vaults of the nave and aisles are angels holding banners inscribed with lines from St. Thomas Aquinas's hymn, "Verbum Supernum Prodiens."

The decoration of the church in the 1920's also included eight large stained glass windows in the cream colored walls of the aisles. All of these came from the well-known studios of Franz Mayer & Company of Munich and New York. The subjects of the windows along the north wall, reading from the entrance to the apse end of the church are: St. Hyacinth of Cracow; Blessed Salome; the Holy Family; Our Lady and the Christ Child Appearing to St. Stanilaus of Kostka; and the Betrothal and Marriage of the Virgin. The subjects of the windows in the south aisle, reading from the entrance to the apse end of the church are: St. Anthony of Padua and the Miracle of the Host; St. Claire Repels a Saracen; Christ Blessing the Children; St. Theresa of Lisieux Receiving Roses before the Throne of Mary in Heaven: and St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata. Geometric designs and various liturgical symbols decorate the windows of the clerestory.

The large stained glass window in the west wall above the choir loft is composed of two parts. The lower part depicts the Coronation of the Virgin. This scene extends across six lancet windows. The upper part, or the rose window, depicts in the center quatrefoil St. Cecilia, the patron saint of music, playing an organ. She is surrounded by angels playing various musical instruments in the window's radiating lobes.

In 1948, local artist Marion Rzeznik added ten small paintings of saints over the nave arches and a mural of Christ Blessing the Children at the back of the nave above the center entrance. That same year, in preparation for the celebration of the golden Jubilee of the parish, some minor renovations were made to the church. The sanctuary was extended a few feet into the nave and was given a new marble floor and altar railing; a new marble pulpit replaced the old wooden one; and pink Italian marble wainscoting was mounted on the walls of the aisles and narthex. Also at this time, two new bells, cast by the Meneely Foundry in Troy, New York, were put in place together with the original bell in the north tower, and illuminated electric clocks were installed in the three tower roundels most visible from the street.

The Rectory (199 Clark Street)

Corpus Christi Rectory, which also functioned as a small Franciscan monastery, is a three-and one half story red brick, rectangular building with a Mansard roof and gabled formers. The building, which is set a few feet north of the church, rests on a rusticated red sandstone water table and has symmetrical fenestration with one-over-one double-hung sash fitted with sandstone sills and lintels. The main or west elevation (facing Clark Street) is nine bays wide; and the north elevation (facing Kent Street) is three bays wide; and the east elevation, which overlooks the garden-like north churchyard, is seven bays wide. (The south elevation is obscured from view by its closeness to the church.) The central four bays of the three visible facades project forward from the building to form pavilions that terminate in attic gables. On the west or main elevation, the gable features a central niche with a statue of St. Francis. On the north and east elevations, three and two windows, respectively, occupy the gable pediment. In addition, the three floors of the central pavilion on the east elevation are treated as a curved bay with a projecting porch at ground level. In the 1950s, the original main entrance in the center of the rectory on Clark Street was altered by the addition of a nondescript, enclosed brick porch with the words "The Rectory" inscribed over the doorway. The building connects to the front of the church on the south by means of a two-story, single-bay, brick hyphen that at the ground level has a round sandstone arch that echoes the portals of the church itself. The first floor of the rectory consists of offices and meeting rooms in the front and a dinning area in the rear with connecting kitchen. The upper floors contain the living quarters for the clergy.

The Convent (179 Clark Street)

Corpus Christi Convent, which is located a few feet to the south of the church, is similar in design to the rectory. The convent, however, is nine bays wide by three bays deep, and the statue in the gable niche on the entrance facade, is that of the Virgin Mary. And like the rectory, the convent is joined to the church by a two-story hyphen with ground level sandstone arch.

Chapel (located in the south churchyard)

The Chapel is a simple, two-story, flat-roofed red brick building located behind in the south churchyard, a few feet behind the convent. It is connected to the convent by a three-level hyphen. On the south and north sides, the first floor chapel room is lighted by four round-arched lancet windows filled with non-figurative stained glass. The second level has five one-over-one clear glass sash windows.

Originally, only a single bell hung in the north tower. Cast by the Meneely Foundary, it weighed 2000 pounds and was named "Franciscus." The two new bells were christened "Antonius" (weighing 1100 pounds) and "Hyacinthus" (weighing 600 pounds).

In 1969, the parish undertook a major renovation of the church. The project included repointing the rose window and repairing sills and window frames. On the interior, in order to meet new liturgical requirements, a hardwood altar was installed in the apse so the priest could face the congregation during mass. A. Mazur, a local painter, restored all of the paintings and the painted symbols in the church. Also at this time, gold paint was applied to the angels standing above the clerestory columns and the pier capitals.

The two-story Kolbe Center was erected in 1928 on the west side of Clark Street to serve as a women's and girl's club. Designed in a simplified Renaissance style, the building has walls of beige-colored brick with limestone trim, including an ornamental arch surrounding the entrance. For many years the first floor was used as a kindergarten while the second floor served as offices for Father Justin's Rosary Hour.

The Corpus Christi Club (165 Sears Street)

The Corpus Christi Center is a two story building erected in 1928 in a simplified Renaissance style to serve the physical and recreational needs of the men of the parish. It is built of gray brick with gray limestone trim and has a flat roof.