English: Trinity Old Lutheran Church, 3445 Sheridan Drive at Larch Road, Amherst, New York, November 2022. Dedicated in January 1963, the building is a work of the architectural firm of Shelgren & Whitman and is a fairly typical example of their output at the time, having finally turned their back on the Colonial Revival and other traditionalist styles they favored earlier in favor of a full-fledged embrace of Modernism. The sleek lines, smooth textures, preponderance of right angles and geometric forms on the façade, and relative austerity of exterior ornament all attest. Belying the relative newness of their present building, however, Trinity is actually among the oldest Lutheran congregations in Western New York: it traces its origins to modern-day Germany, where King Frederick William III of Prussia forcibly merged the Lutheran church in that country into the Reformed Church and persecuted those congregations who resisted. The Rev. John A. A. Grabau of St. Andrew's Lutheran Church in Erfurt, Germany, one of those who had refused to accept the merger, led a motley group of exiles, composed of Silesian and Alsatian factions, to exile in America. The party arrived in the nearby city of Buffalo in October 1839, immediately formalized themselves as a new Lutheran congregation worshiping in the traditional style, but soon fell victim to interethnic squabbles; it was the Alsatian faction who seceded and founded Trinity Old Lutheran. They worshiped in a succession of buildings on the East Side of that city, the final one of which was located on Brunswick Boulevard and built in 1924, shortly before the language of worship was changed from German to English as a means of attracting and/or retaining more congregants. Despite this and other efforts, changing neighborhood demographics still led to shrinking attendance, hence their merger with the Sheridan Drive Lutheran Church and move to the latter's building, a small white clapboard chapel with a seating capacity of about 100 that almost instantly proved to be too small for the congregation's needs. Construction of the present church, to the tune of $225,000, began in 1961 and took about a year and a half.