This parish was organized as St. James Church on August 14, 1848. Its founder and first Rector, Dr. Henry Gregory, supported many tenets of the Anglo-Catholic or “High Church” movement. At a time when most churches required parishioners to pay “rent” for their seats in church, he formed this church as the first “freely seated and freely supported” parish in the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York and only the second in the entire state. Later renamed “The Church of the Saviour,” it was designated a Pro-Cathedral of the diocese, and even today remains nominally the bishop’s own. The parish’s Anglo-Catholic character was further strengthened by Father Karl Schwartz, who served as Dean and then Rector until 1924.