Tag: St. Monica’s

Torn-Down Tuesday: St. Monica church on Orlando Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

What would become known as the Seneca-Babcock section of the city sprung from the outgrowth of the Old First Ward and South Buffalo, St. Monica Roman Catholic Church and school was built on Orlando Street in 1913.

St. Monica church and school as it neared completion in 1913.

The building was a utilitarian one, and mirrored very closely similar church/school structures that were springing up in newly populated areas – or areas where there were demographic shifts – around Buffalo.

Many newly formed neighborhood parishes built combination church/school structures with the church on the main floor and school rooms upstairs and downstairs.

This particular building was designed by Lansing, Bley and Lyman, and was dedicated on June 14, 1914, by Bishop Charles Colton and Monsignor Nelson Baker.

The parish was carved from St. Teresa on Seneca Street in South Buffalo, St. Stephen on Elk Street in the First Ward and St. Patrick on Emslie Street in the Hydraulics district. Taking from neighborhoods that were Irish, Polish and German, from the beginning the community as St. Monica was based on geography more than ethnicity, as many other Catholic churches around Buffalo of the time were.

After more than 80 years of serving the community, and with the retirement of the pastor, Monsignor William Setlock, St. Monica’s was closed and merged with SS Rita and Patrick Church in 1995.
The building on the short block of Orlando Street between the I-190 and Seneca Street was torn down in 1997, and in its place, a well-manicured patch of grass.