English: St. Anthony Roman Catholic Church, 306 Ingham Avenue at South Street, Lackawanna, New York, December 2022. Dating to 1964, the church building is the work of local architect Milton Milstein, who proffers a resolutely Modernist design whose most eye-catching feature is a sweeping front-gabled roof with cantilevered eaves whose enormity almost approaches A-Frame levels. This roof extends like a tent over exterior walls where the standard midcentury motif of straight lines and right angles reigns supreme: windows on the side elevations are tucked into recessed columns; the stained glass in the front boasts a simple geometric pattern and is fronted by a row of pilaster-like vertical ribs; the concrete-framed tower takes a cruciform footprint; the shed-roofed entrance vestibule adds an almost Miesian element. Founded by the Rev. Antonio Clemente in 1917 as a mission church serving a community of Italian-American steelworkers at the behemoth Lackawanna Steel Plant, St. Anthony set to work erecting their first purpose-built church - a modest, single-story, $12,000 frame structure located just to the left of the present one - upon the completion of which it was elevated to the status of full-fledged parish in short order. Clemente and his successors, Revs. Joseph Vifredo and Thomas Ciolino, spent the next several years expanding the building as needed, founding various parish societies, establishing a school and a scout troop for the younger members, and generally shepherding a vigorously growing parish: by 1960, when planning for the present-day building commenced, St. Anthony's membership had approximately tripled in size. Planning and fundraising continued until 1963, when ground was broken and the yearlong construction process began. However, this was also about the time when the church's growth began to slow, halt and finally reverse itself, as cutbacks in the workforce at Lackawanna Steel and the overall outmigration of population from the Rust Belt began to take their toll. Another effect of this decline was demographic changes among the flock: St. Anthony had been home to a significant Hispanic contingent since as early as the 1940s, but as the older Italian-American parishioners died off and the younger ones began more and more to assimilate into the larger American society and move away from ethnic enclaves, that minority steadily grew, and became an outright majority in 1998 with the dissolution and merger of the neighboring Queen of All Saints parish. Today, the parish remains one of the most diverse in the Buffalo Diocese, with a membership comprising folks of Italian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, and African-American descent, among myriad others.