English: Hermon Karen Baptist Church, 3021 Bailey Avenue at Davidson Avenue, Buffalo, New York, June 2020. Architecturally, here we have a most unusual permutation of the Gothic Revival style: the façade is essentially an enormous portal enclosing a pointed arch, deeply recessed within which is the front entrance and stained glass window etched with bar tracery. Flanking the portal are a pair of louver windows, topped consecutively with ogee-arched hoods and crenellated parapets. The building was originally home to St. James Roman Catholic Church, a parish that was founded in 1916 to serve the mixed German/Irish community of Kensington-Bailey, an area in the northeast corner of the city that was still semirural at the time, but rapidly urbanizing. A modest frame chapel gave way in 1918 to a combination church/school building, which in turn gave way for the present building, groundbreaking for which occurred in 1926. However, construction of the church stalled for over a decade due to lack of funding, compounded by the financial hardship of the Great Depression; throughout all that time, the congregation worshiped in the basement, as it was the only completed portion of the building. The date of completion of construction is uncertain, but no later than 1951. The interior of the church was renovated in 1980, but parish population began to decline soon afterward due to the demographic changes afoot in the neighborhood; St. James shared a pastor with St. Gerard parish for last two years of its existence before its dissolution in 2007 as part of the diocese's "Journey in Faith and Grace" consolidation program. After St. James' closure, the building served for a time as home to Helping Hands Food Pantry; its current owner (since 2015) is a Baptist congregation serving the local Karen refugee community.