English: St. Mary's School for the Deaf, 2253 Main Street at Dewey Avenue, Buffalo, New York, December 2020. The main building in this large education complex, seen here, is a good example of the Italian Renaissance Revival style of architecture that was common around the turn of the century when it was built, displaying the requisite horizontally-layered approach to the façade: round-arched windows with eyebrow heads at the top contrast with rectangular ones on the bottom two floors, with belt courses that run the full width of the building separating the stories and smaller string courses of decorative masonry intersection the bottom-floor windows perpendicularly. Two-story projecting oriels on the lateral wings are decorated with garland reliefs in the spandrel panels, while the entrance portico reflects the roofline with its Classical detailing (pediment, dentil course, cornice bracketed with modillions) and also adding flourishes of its own (Ionic columns, two levels of balustrades, a graceful arch). The roots of St. Mary's School for the Deaf trace back to 1853, when prominent local citizen Louis LeCouteulx de Caumont founded the Benevolent Society for the Deaf and Dumb, which began operation six years later at a site on Edward Street with "four girls and a few boys" in the charge of a quartet of Sisters of Saint Joseph brought to the city at the request of Bishop John Timon of the Catholic diocese. The present building was dedicated in 1898 and today offers a full, rigorous curriculum to about 100 students ranging in age from kindergarten through 12th grade employing a variety of communication styles.