Architect/developer Karl Frizlen of The Frizlen Group Architects is seeking approval this week to convert the St. Rose of Lima school at the northeast corner of Winston Road and Parkside Avenue in North Buffalo into a 20-unit apartment complex. In South Buffalo, Frizlen is also seeking to put 36 units in the St. Teresa School at 17 Mineral Spring Road. His third school-to-apartment project being planned is further along and will start in late spring.
Thirty-two market rate apartments are planned for the Saint Thomas Aquinas Roman Catholic school and gymnasium. The school and gymnasium are located behind the church at 432 Abbott Road and front both Tamarack and Athol streets.
The Saint Thomas Aquinas complex is comprised of three buildings; the original George J. Dietel-designed circa-1921 three-story school building with 1956 two-story addition, the original circa 1921 rectory, and the 1950 Stickle, Stickle, & Kelly chapel.
Eighteeen one-bedroom and fourteen two-bedroom units are planned. Apartments will retain the original wood flooring in the former classrooms and auditorium area and built-in cabinets that remain in portions of the gymnasium wing. Eight of the apartments will be located in the gymnasium wing fronting Athol Street. The two-story gymnasium will be retained as a community meeting and gathering space. The remainder of the units will be in the brick school building closer to Tamarack Street. On-site parking for 38 cars is proposed.
The project is utilizing historic preservation tax credits. Preservation Studios prepared the landmark designation materials. Here’s an excerpt:
South Buffalo developed as a true “streetcar suburb,” with most of its development occurring between 1890 and 1930, linked almost directly with the completion of the Seneca Streetcar line in 1897. Developers like William Fitzpatrick and William Conners anticipated the migration of Irish-Americans out of the First Ward, and began developing parcels into affordable single-and-multi family homes.
Irish-Catholic migration into South Buffalo continued well into the 1930s. Even with several parishes already established, there was still overcrowding in the churches. As a result, Bishop Williams Turner coordinated the efforts of several South Buffalo pastors to form St. Thomas’ Aquinas in 1920, and appointed Reverend Eugene Regan, the pastor of All Souls Parish, to head the new parish. Rev. Regan purchased the site, and began construction of a temporary church structure, which was finished in July of 1920.
The completion of the church coincided with the rapid settlement of the area around it, and the parish began construction the following year on the St. Thomas Aquinas School building, a two-story brick building designed by George Dietel in the Spanish Mission style. Though the parish planned on building a larger church to replace the original 1920 building, the onset of the Great Depression and World War II put plans on hold until 1945, when a building fund was created. In 1949, the parish broke ground on the Stickle, Kelly, and Stickle designed church, which was completed in 1951.
Located at the southern corner of the property, the two-and-one-half story brick rectory has a distinct Spanish mission style, with clay-tile roof, clipped-cross-gables, with gable and shed-style roof dormers on most elevations. Constructed around the time of the 1921 George J. Dietel designed school, the building shares its style and materials, with the same roof, brick pattern and window surrounds.
Located in the western corner of the property is the 1949-1951 Stickle, Stickle, and Kelly designed church and cloister. The church is one-story, 34 feet high, of limestone and crab orchard stone, also designed in the Spanish Mission style, with a tile roof, large arched openings, and a simple cornice of stepped brick arches at the top of the western elevation, just above a large rose window.
The entire north and eastern half of the block contains the St. Thomas Aquinas School, which has a “T” shape, with a central double-loaded corridor bookended by the main central stair, and perpendicular hallway. The original circa 1921 Dietel designed school is three stories tall and constructed with the same brick and stone as the rectory building, with the same red tile roof and copper drains as well. It maintains the complex’s Spanish Mission styling with a cross-gable on the northern end with stepped parapets, and a simple cornice of soldier course brick with stepped courses below and above. The classrooms in this building are unaltered, with a mixture of science labs and plain classrooms, with original built-in cubbies and closets.
The St. Thomas Aquinas School and Church Complex is significant under Criterion A for Religion, as an intact example of religious education and parish complex. It served the growing South Buffalo community, which developed rapidly after the turn of the twentieth-century as a streetcar suburb of the city populated primarily by Irish Catholics. It is also significant under Criterion C for architecture for its great examples of Spanish Mission styles, with modern constructions that reference the earlier construction. The buildings were designed by George J. Dietel, one of the architects of record for Buffalo’s City Hall; Stickle, Kelly, and Stickle, a firm that specialized in designing Roman Catholic Churches; and one of the first designs by Trautman, Turley, and Schlenker, an architecture and engineering firm that still operates in Buffalo today as Trautman Associates.
George J. Dietal was a local architect that gained national prominence for his work on Buffalo’s city hall, one of the largest Art Deco city halls in the country. Dietel was a Buffalo native who attended Canisius High School and College, and worked on numerous commissions around the city before partnering with John J. Wade in 1926 to prepare the design for City Hall. Wade, who studied at the Beaux Arts Institute in New York City, moved to Buffalo in 1919 after working with several architecture firms across the country, often designing large municipal buildings, including the Oakland City Hall, Pittsburgh City and County Buildings, and Wilmington City Hall. Dietel partnered with Wade in 1926 to give the latter local experience and to handle some of the workload designing the 560,000 building.
One of the best examples of George J. Dietel’s work is the St. Francis de Sales Church on Humboldt Parkway in 1926, designed with Murphy and Olmsted. The St. Francis de Sales Church has a lot of similarities to the St. Thomas Aquinas complex, as it is also designed in the Spanish Mission style, with red clay tile roof, and large Indiana limestone like the later-designed church on the site.
Elevations and site plan courtesy of The Frizlen Group Architects
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