English: St. John's Lutheran Church, 67 Litchfield Avenue at Wilton Street, Depew, New York, January 2023. A work of the Buffalo-based architectural practice of Shelgren & Whitman, this this T-shaped tan brick church dates to 1950. Although in this early era of the firm's history the bulk of their work hewed to conservative, some might say passé stylistic schemes such as the Gothic and Colonial, the design of St. John's instead presages the seamless blending of traditionalism and Modernism that would become their primary stock in trade going forward. Note the sleek lines, smooth surfaces, simplified forms, and sparse ornamentation but also the bluntly pointed Gothic arch above the main entrance at the base of the stubby, spireless tower, as well as the Romanesque-inspired blind semicircular arch framing the roundel window on the west elevation facing Wilton Street (right). St. John's itself was founded in April 1895 at the dawn of Depew's history as a bustling, blue-collar company town that, only three years earlier, had been established by and named for New York Central Railroad president Chauncey Depew as a service and manufacturing hub conveniently located along the main line between Buffalo and Batavia. Though a multiethnic patchwork of immigrants would settle in the village and take up employment in its roughly half-dozen machine shops and factories, those who worshipped at St. John's were mostly of German ethnicity and tended to be fairly well-off by village standards, being by and large skilled tradespeople. The Depew Improvement Company - the NYCRR subsidiary charged with developing the village - donated a plot on Kokomo Street several blocks east of here for the construction of a permanent home for the congregation, a modest wood-frame building that was moved in 1913 to the church's present site. However, as the 20th century wore on and the frontier of built-up land around Buffalo began to expand outward - a phenomenon connected to the postwar wave of suburbanization - Depew began to lose its identity as an independent community, and the swelling of the congregation with newcomers proceeded to such a degree that a larger church was quickly becoming a necessity. Accordingly, ground was broken in November 1949 for this new sanctuary, whose construction was undertaken by contractor F. B. Balcerzak of Medina, New York, cost $75,000, and proceeded quickly, with dedication ceremonies held just ten months later.