MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC

MEDINA, NY

Vac-Eclipse-April 2024-112 4x3 Eclipse Vacation. Visiting our childhood home. April 2024.
Vac-Eclipse-April 2024-112 4x3 Credit: Gary Brownell

The Medina Sandstone Society Inc. is a non-profit organization based in Medina, New York that specializes in the preservation and promotion of the historic Medina Sandstone. The Medina Sandstone is an architectural stone that has been used in the construction of many historic buildings in the area, including churches, banks, commercial buildings, and even a few well-known bridges.

The Medina Sandstone Society was founded in 1997 by local builders, stone masons, and stone suppliers with the mission of preserving the Medina Sandstone and its history. The society is dedicated to researching, preserving, and promoting the unique stone and its usage in the area for generations to come.

The Medina Sandstone Society regularly organizes tours of the area to educate people about the stone and its importance to the local history and architecture. The society also offers educational classes and seminars on the stone, as well as technical and design advice to those interested in incorporating it into their own projects.

The society is also heavily involved in the preservation of historic buildings in the area, advocating for their protection and restoration. In addition, the society works with local government officials to promote the stone and its usage in the area, as well as to develop policies that will aid in the preservation of the stone and its history.

The Medina Sandstone Society is an important part of the local community and its mission to preserve the unique architectural stone and its history for future generations.

MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC is a Historical Societies, Historic Preservation in MEDINA NY. US MID #8403601756

The museum is classed as HSC (Historical Societies, Historic Preservation). It comes under American Alliance of Museums (AAM) region: Mid-Atlantic (District of Columbia, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania).

Vac-Eclipse-April 2024-112 4x3 Eclipse Vacation. Visiting our childhood home. April 2024.
April 17, 2023: St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Clarence, New York Built in 1962, the visually striking architecture of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Clarence, New York is a typical example of the forward-looking design philosophy of Highland & Highland, a firm based in the nearby city of Buffalo. If you're an architecture buff like me, you can read <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/53580421142">more about St. Paul's</a> at <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/">Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts</a>, my other account where I go deeper into the weeds about these sorts of things.
St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Clarence, New York, April 2023 St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, 7720 Goodrich Road, Clarence, New York, April 2023. Built in 1962, the visually striking architecture of this building is a typical example of the forward-looking design philosophy of the Buffalo firm of Highland & Highland. At first blush, the wide expanse of abstract, geometrically-patterned stained glass on the façade, along with the sprawling slope of the enormous roof whose eaves reach nearly all the way down to the ground, might give the impression of the A-frame style that was up-and-coming on the architecture scene at the time. However, look closer and you'll see that the structure is based around a series of soaring parabolic arches: eight in all, each standing 60 feet high. Echoes of the same curvilinear pattern can be found throughout the spacious interior as well, specifically in the scalloped supports on the side and in the chancel itself. The overall effect, then, falls under the aegis of the Neo-Expressionist style in which the firm specialized. (Note, however, the sharp contrast presented by the straight lines of the south side annex, which also contains the narrow, oblong bell tower.) According to newspaper coverage at the time of the church's construction, the lofty dimensions of the structure (further emphasized by its placement atop a 10-foot man-made hill) was a key element of the architect's symbolic intent: namely "to reflect the spirit of achievement in the long history of the congregation", which traces its deepest roots back to 1840, when a band of Lutherans from what's now Germany who'd earlier fled the religious persecution of King Friedrich Wilhelm III found a home among the well-established German-American community in the hamlet of Wolcottsburg, in the northern part of the town of Clarence. They founded St. Paul's in 1855, and immediately set to work constructing a simple wood-framed chapel on a plot just south of the present church, at the corner of Wolcott Road. For far longer than most local Protestant congregations, St. Paul's held fast to both its ethnic and its physical heritage: services continued to be held in German as late as 1954, and replacement of the original church building wasn't envisioned until 1956, when deferred maintenance and modernization needs forced their hand. Groundbreaking ceremonies in April 1961 kicked off a fourteen-month, $125,000 construction program.
February 12, 2023: Clarence United Methodist Church, Clarence, New York Though the building in which it meets currently is much newer - built in two discrete phases in 1962 and 1973 respectively - the Clarence Methodist Church in Clarence, New York is by some estimates the first church of any denomination ever to have been organized on the Niagara Frontier, tracing the earliest roots of its history back to 1807. If you're an architecture buff like me, you can read <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/53577771619">more about the church</a> at <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/">Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts</a>, my other account where I go deeper into the weeds about these sorts of things.
January 14, 2023: Pine Hill Cemetery, Elba, New York Scene from a visit to Pine Hill Cemetery in Elba, New York on a frigid winter morning. Extending to an area of about an acre on the parcel otherwise occupied by the Elba United Methodist Church <i>(background)</i> with which it was historically associated, the cemetery dates to 1803 and is a typical example of those that dotted the rural hinterlands of Upstate New York at the time, with many headstones that comprise fine examples of the era's typical funerary artwork. Pine Hill contains the remains of about 600 or 700 individuals, many of whom figure among the village's founding fathers. One especially notable burial was that of John Young (1775-1836), signer of the first deed ever issued by the Holland Land Company: on July 22, 1803, he and his wife Peggy purchased 102 acres on the Oak Orchard Road for the price of $202, on which they operated a farm and a roadside tavern.
First English Lutheran Church, Lockport, New York, January 2023 First English Lutheran Church, 185 Locust Street, Lockport, New York, January 2023. A work of the Buffalo-based firm of Shelgren & Whitman, the English Gothic-styled design of this handsome 1956 church complex is markedly traditionalist even by the relatively conservative standards of the architects. A prominent vertical orientation is furnished by the narrowness and pointed arches that crown the triple window that's centrally placed on the façade, which like the entrance below is framed by a Gibbs surround executed in cast cut-stone with a repeating pattern of Greek crosses engraved between. Note also the tall but spireless tower, with projecting parapets on the corners giving a crenellated effect. The exterior cladding of hickory brick contrasts with an interior appointed in sand-finished plaster, accentuated with oak trim, and featuring a ceiling with laminated trusses that, according to the architect, symbolize folded arms extending heavenward in prayer. Stained glass windows were imported from the Netherlands. In addition to the sanctuary, the complex also comprises a three-story, Modern-style north wing containing Sunday school classrooms <i>(left background)</i> as well as a parish house <i>(far right, only partly visible)</i>. Despite the relative newness of the building, the congregation actually figures among the oldest extant ones in Niagara County: founded in 1837, it was indeed the first Lutheran congregation in and around Lockport to hold services in the English language as opposed to German, but like the others, its congregation was principally German in ethnic origin, being composed largely of farmers who had been displaced from their previous homes in the eastern parts of New York and Pennsylvania during the War of 1812. The original church - the first of three that would house the congregation over the course of its existence - was a simple log structure built by the members themselves on a plot of land donated by local political figure, landowner, and Erie Canal innovator Jesse Hawley and now the site of Ida Fritz Memorial Park. Founding pastor Rev. John Seimser and his successors held services there until 1848, when a combination of the growth of the business district, the move of much of the population to the city's east side, and deferred maintenance on the building led the congregation to purchase the plot on the northwest corner of Locust and Walnut Streets and erect a magnificent large church building, which served the congregation through highs and lows - and several expansions and renovations, including a 1917 teardown of the original façade and its replacement with a fortresslike Norman Gothic structure - for the next century-plus. Plans for its replacement with the even larger present structure date to 1952, when - in light of increasingly cramped conditions at Sunday services caused by Lockport's steady growth into a satellite suburb of Buffalo and Niagara Falls - the congregation accepted the donation of the former site of the Charles Van Valkenburgh house five blocks north of the existing church, approved the appointment of a Building Committee headed by James Yost, and set about searching for a suitable architect. Fundraising proceeded slowly but steadily, with ground broken on the $250,000 complex in August 1954 and construction lasting two years.
September 8, 2022: St. Mary R.C. Church, Clarence, New York With a history dating back to the 1830s, St. Mary's (or, as it was originally known, St. Mary's of the Assumption) is one of the oldest churches in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York, and is the nucleus around which the hamlet of Swormville - long a rural colony of German and French farmers, now a wealthy exurb - coalesced. The current church building dates to 1865. If you're an architecture buff like me, you can read <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/53496118028">more about St. Mary's</a> at <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/">Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts</a>, my other account where I go deeper into the weeds about these sorts of things.
St. Mary R.C. Church, Clarence, New York, September 2022 St. Mary Roman Catholic Church, 6919 Transit Road at Stahley Road, Clarence, New York, September 2022. One of the oldest churches in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, St. Mary's (or, as it was originally known, St. Mary's of the Assumption) has a history that dates back to the 1830s and is closely tied up with that of the hamlet in which it's located: Swormville, a community straddling the Amherst/Clarence town line that was gathered around the tavern and general store operated by Bavarian immigrant Adam Schworm, and whose initially German, Alsatian, and French settlers were overwhelmingly Catholic and desirous of a house of worship to call their own. Father John Nepomucene Neumann (later Saint John Neumann, the first male American Catholic to be canonized by the Vatican) was a local representative of the Redemptorist order whose job it was to hold services for those scattered Catholic communities of rural Western New York that were too small to sustain full-fledged parishes of their own. Father Neumann held Mass and administered sacraments wherever he could: first at the homes and barns of local residents, then beginning in 1839 at a converted log cabin that served as St. Mary's first permanent home. After Neumann's move to Philadelphia the next year, services were held even less frequently, usually by priests who visited periodically from SS. Peter and Paul in Williamsville. With the continued growth of Swormville, however, Buffalo bishop John Timon reestablished St. Mary's as a full-fledged parish in 1849 complete with its own resident pastor, Rev. John B. Menauer. Sixteen years later came the construction of its second and current home, this simple but handsome brick church building in a vernacular Romanesque Revival style (note the round arches crowning the entrance and stained-glass windows as well as the raking cornel tables underneath the eaves of the roof).
June 12, 2022: Agrarian vista, Rochester Road, Royalton, New York This photo presents a sweeping view over a vast expanse of cultivated fields and farm buildings from a site near the corner of Rochester Road and Griswold Street in Royalton, New York, just west of the village of Middleport.
May 30, 2022: Crapsey Homestead, Lockport, New York The Moses Crapsey Homestead in Lockport, New York, built circa 1837, is one of the few remaining pioneer-era stone farmhouses in the town. If you're an architecture buff like me, you can read <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/53417697020">more about the house</a> at <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/198134987@N03/">Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts</a>, my other account where I go deeper into the weeds about these sorts of things.
May 30, 2022: Crapsey Homestead, Lockport, New York, May 2022 The Moses Crapsey Homestead, 4878 Sunset Drive, Lockport, New York, May 2022. With a style that is best described as a vernacularized iteration of the then-trendy Greek Revival (though do note a number of unexpected high-style touches in the ornamentation, such as the original transom and sidelights framing the front entrance) appended to the classic gable-and-wing floor plan ever popular in America's agricultural interior, this circa-1837 residence is notable as one of the few remaining stone farmhouses in the Town of Lockport. It once stood at the center of a vast 163-acre expanse of orchards, vineyards, hayfields, cultivated crops, and dairyland belonging to Moses Crapsey (1802-1888), one of Lockport's most prominent and prosperous citizens of his era. Aside from farming, Crapsey held a number of local civic and institutional posts, such as board member of the Cambria-Lockport Plank Road Company and the Niagara Agricultural Society. He also used part of his land as an event space known as "Crapsey's Grove", hosting a wide range of public picnics, band concerts, and other community happenings. The house is now owned by Cozy Resort Cattery, a cat boarding facility.
Oak Orchard Light House Point Breeze, Carlton NY

Contact MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC

MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC
PO BOX 25
MEDINA
NY
14103-0025

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MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC Information

MID # 8403601756
Name MEDINA SANDSTONE SOCIETY INC
Alternate Name
Classification Historical Societies, Historic Preservation, , Mid-Atlantic
Federal Employer Identification Number (EIN) 208883512
NTEECC A80
Tax period of the latest return filed (YYYYMM) 201212
INCOME 0
REVENUE 0
LAT/LONG 43.220397, -78.388112
CODES FIPS State Code: 36
FIPS County Code: 073
US Census Tract: 040400
US Census Block: 2030