St Stephen’s Episcopal Church & Watson Ministry Center

St Stephen’s Episcopal Church & Watson Ministry Center

Olean, Cattaraugus County

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, a striking Victorian Gothic and Romanesque landmark built in 1890 and designed by architect Robert W. Gibson, features brown sandstone walls, windows by Whitefriars Stained Glass Studios, and a bell tower. The adjacent Watson Ministry Center, an 1885 wooden Victorian building, was gifted to the church in 1950. Today, after extensive renovations, the building houses the Miriam Center for Hope and Healing, where independent clinicians provide trauma counseling, mental‑health therapy, and professional training for practitioners across the region. It also hosts Cattaraugus Community Action’s Victim Services program, which offers advocacy, crisis support, and resources for survivors of domestic violence.

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The Spark

An unused church building became an opportunity for St. Stephen’s congregation to extend its long tradition of serving the Olean community.

In 2013, Reverend Kim Rossi moved to Olean to become the priest of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church. She had previously spent 27 years as a social work consultant focused on mental health; she also had hands-on experience with building projects, having helped rebuild homes in Central America after Hurricane Mitch in1998 and establishing an orphanage in Honduras.
When she arrived, she found the church in need of repairs, with broken furnaces, crumbling chimneys, and a multitude of small issues that required attention. She also noticed that the connected Watson Wing, once used for Sunday school and church offices, now sat unused. Rev. Rossi asked the congregation to consider cleaning it out and making use of it, an idea they embraced as part of their call “to be Christ in the world.” The St. Stephen's congregation had a reputation for serving the community, whether through food pantries or holiday meals for the community, and they enthusiastically said yes.