Buffalo Rising Online

This article hits home so I'll start off with a positive comment. An auction is the best idea for this property at this point. The owners have chosen an experienced auctioneer that will get a fair price. Hopefully someone buys it.

This was my grandmother's parish. Without getting into a lot of detail, let's just say she struggled to put my mother through school at this parish. Her early 1950s graduation picture is still on display in the living room.

Fast forward to my vivid recollection in 1992 as a newly re-established Buffalo resident. Having learned of the demise of this building, I called the Catholic Diocese. Back then, my demeanor was polite. After all my elementary, high school and college education was all Western New York Catholic, basically from this corporation I was contacting. The answers the Diocese gave back then rose to criminal activity in my opinion. They were selling the windows my family paid for and we had no right even to make an offer. The Diocese was giving away the stripped building and taking back a large mortgage, knowing full well that no one would be able to pay it. The Diocesan attorneys were pretty sharp back then as their client escaped any financial liability, housing code violations, etc.

Our Lady of Lourdes was not unique. St. Francis de Sales (575 Humboldt Parkway at Northland Ave) went down the same way. The school was torn down, I bought the rectory at a foreclosure sale, and the church remains a crumbling reminder of our Catholic heritage.

A few pieces of information from Cash would be helpful. It's not advertised as absolute. At what minimum price will it sell? What are the terms of the owner financing?

Will the space be available for viewing any time prior to the day of the auction?

My comment would be, if it's not open before the day of the auction, and it's not an absolute sale, then the current owner is just fishing for a buyer (nothing wrong with that, but don't be fooled into thinking this is going to change hands, just because they hang an auction sign.)

This has got to be part of Artspace.

The marble and panelling are gone and so are all the religious artifacts. However the masonary is still beautifully intact. Its just the roof and windows that need work.

That means that for a roof and clear glass windows, artspace could have a perfect large, open floor plan for art and sculpture.

Gothic and Romanesque architecture is becoming more rare every passing day. Buffalo is blessed to have as many examples as we have but as we have pissed away our downtown and our near urban residential communities....we must not let these anchors of the community needlessly be lost.

If there is anyone from artspace....please put this church up on the radar.

one only has to look at the montante center over at canisius to see how easily Lourdes could be utilized by Artspace.

stewie - After putting a lot of time, money and effort in, I sold the St. Francis de Sales rectory last summer. The new owner plans to rent out the building as student housing. The former church building no one ever wanted because it needed too much work and was designated a local landmark, making rehab cost even higher.

These former religious buildings are really pretty but pretty doesn't pay the bills.

The pictures on the auction site are useless. I wonder if Buffalo as an Arch Museum has pics??

I'm having a difficult time finding pictures of église de Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes. Has anyone been inside in a while?

Josh, I wasn't able to find any interior pictures when I researched the history article, but Chuck LaChiusa does outline the Landmark Society's proposal for the area with the Midtown Renaissance Project: Organic Revitalization - Artspace Buffalo

This is a clear-span structure, as the 1898 Buffalo Morning Express article describes: "The body of the church has no pillars which are a nuisance in so many churches in the city."