Immaculate Conception RC Church / Assembly House 150

Church / Assembly House 150 - Table of Contents

Nave
Immaculate Conception RC Church / Assembly House 150
146 Edward Street, Buffalo, New York
In Allentown Preservation District

Excerpts

After a Decade of Decline, an Abandoned Church Finds Its Meaning
By Colin Dabkowski
April 5, 2014
The Buffalo News

Assembly House 150, as [owner/artist Dennis] Maher is retitling the former church, will house classroom space for students, a gallery and studio where artists and tradespeople will collaborate on architectural and artistic projects and a for-profit design and building studio that will help foster a new crop of buildings in the city.

Assembly House is an extension of his ongoing Fargo House project, Maher’s home and studio on the West Side that he has turned into a fascinating living sculpture.

“I have a really strong interest in collective projects. By that I mean projects that involve different hands in the mix, multiple authors,” Maher said. “I see myself more as a director or facilitator rather than as a kind of top-down orchestrator. I’m interested in understanding more about what other people’s ideas and interests are and in trying to create synergies among like-minded groups of people. I see myself as a kind of a synapse. That’s what I want to be.”

Maher’s plans for the church are in some ways as grandiose as those of its original builders, who saw the building as a tribute to a higher power. In his view and that of his collaborators, Assembly House 150 is not only a meeting place for educators, students, artists, thinkers and builders, but a living temple to the human imagination.

Excerpts

A Master of Accumulation

By Penelope Green
January 23, 2013
The New York Times

When Mr. Maher began working on his own house, his methods and concerns were not exactly those of a typical renovator.

After he sorted through the junk he found inside, he began to build, reconfiguring the pieces of things like a home entertainment center, old deck chairs, fish tanks, dollhouses and dollhouse furniture, model train set pieces, jewelry boxes, brooms and silverware.

He attached the structures he created to the floors, walls and ceilings, like Joseph Cornell sculptures run amok, and he began aggressively collecting objects to add to those structures, scouring flea markets, Dumpsters and thrift stores. “I look for anything house-like, or things in miniature or objects that have an inside, like jewelry boxes,” he said.

Mark Goldman, an urban historian and author who has been a frequent visitor to Mr. Maher’s house, said that when he first saw the place, he was overwhelmed.

“I saw it as a self-indulgent arts project,” Mr. Goldman said. “But then I began to understand there’s an idea behind it. We have a whole genre of work I like to call Rust Belt porn, a fascination with rust and decay for its own sake. People love taking pictures of rusty structures. But Dennis is trying to make a larger statement about regeneration and renewal, and bring an artistic point of view towards what other people have thrown away.”

Nave

2015 Photos

Photo taken from choir loft ... Pointed Gothic ceiling with ribbed vaults ... Arcaded arches supported by columns

Ribbed vaults in ceiling ... Clearstory windows with blind arches below ... Arcaded arches supported by columns

Colin Dabkowski, "After a Decade of Decline, an Abandoned Church Finds Its Meaning": “If you look at that, you might say wow, that looks really challenging to repair,” Maher said. “I would respond, that's a cosmetic thing, and it doesn't even need to be repaired as much as it needs to be exposed, shored up, attended to, in ways that aren't necessarily the ways we would approach development projects.”

Clearstory windows with trefoil blind arches below ... Clearstory windows all still intact unlike mandorla window nave over the choir loft and nave windows which were removed from the church by the Diocese when it closed the church ... Cloth reinforced plaster corbels

Stenciled stained glass quatrefoils

"Inside the former Immaculate Conception Church at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and Edward Street, where the last Mass was held on a midsummer Sunday in 2005, a dozen squares of plywood paneling hang on the walls in place of the stations of the cross ... What will replace those plywood panels where the stations of the cross once hung will have more to do with architecture and artistry than ecclesiastical narratives. In a city full of crumbling churches, Maher’s project has the potential to be a national model for progress. - Colin Dabkowski, "After a Decade of Decline, an Abandoned Church Finds Its Meaning"

Sculptor Maher collects miniatures, toys and other small objects to use in his work ... The building is used as his studio among other uses.

Artist / building owner Dennis Maher

Nave stained glass windows removed before Maher purchased the building

Cloth reinforced plaster corbels

Column shafts are painted cast iron

Arcaded arches supported by columns

web site consulting by ingenious, inc.