Not a font. Architectural lettering like this was sometimes created from premanufactured letters, but not the same ones used by printers (which were then later digitized as the fonts we use today). But this one feels custom to me. Never seen ligatures like that on any other building.

Ha! From Jan: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nicksherman/7559024022/

ITC Avant Garde Pro, although it has major differences, also has much the same general feel and some similarly formed ligatures - but the only one that's at all the same is CO. The title on the building is used as the organization's logo.

wow, thanks so much! it looked totally different than the Avant Garde I know of (ignorance on my part).

@Stephen Coles I am a big fan of typographica. thank you so much for your post and tweets. Your post on your favorite font sources had me lost in a typographical rabbit hole for hours.

The completion of this church predates Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase's design for the Avant Garde font by some 20 years. A more likely inspiration for this lettering is Lucian Bernhard's Bernhard Gothic (1929).

My thought was that the congregation's home might have influenced Lubalin and the others who developed the Avant Garde typeface. They worked in the city, and the Community Church of New York was a very well-known institution (though not quite as well known as the OTHER CCNY).