What a nice mural you might think? Once you know the original creator of it you’ll know he is quite the prick because he would straight up send invoices to any business that features his work on their websites. One such example is Buffalo Bike Tours whom I took a historical tour on this trip, they were slapped $5,000 an amount that is greater than the company’s total revenue from last year. Imagine how petty that he would proceed straight with fining without initiating with a cease and desist letter because in his mind the damage had already been done. Mural used to be a regular stop on their tours but they had to start skipping it due to this outrage.
The mural that has taken over as the selfie spot for the tours is this one. The story behind it is that it used to be something printed on a t-shirt that the owner of the building after buying the t-shirt thought it would look cool painted on the side of his building so he made it happen. The Keep Buffalo a Secret is a message definitely rings true that Buffalo is an overlooked city with the potential to surprise you, it definitely did it for me and read on and you will see what I mean.
Let’s jump into the art decos shall we? One of the most striking buildings is no other than the Buffalo City Hall. Completed in 1931 at 398 feet high, it is one of the tallest municipal office buildings in the U.S!
Just facing city hall is a 96 ft obelisk dedicated on 1907 to the memory of William McKinley, 25th President of the United States. McKinley was fatally shot while attending the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on September 6, 1901.
Serving as a reminder of another dignitary that visited Buffalo is the Hotel Lafayette. The precise year was 1825 at the 50th anniversary of the American War for Independence, Marquis de Lafayette a famous hero of that conflict provided assistance from France. He was visiting Buffalo en route to Boston. The Lafayette Hotel itself was planned to be ready for Pan-American Exposition in 1901 but financial problems delayed the hotel opening until 1904. It was designed principally by Louise Blanchard Bethune. She was the first professional woman architect in the country. Fifty years after its opening, it was still being run by the same family, but eventually hotel fell into decline and disrepair. Some parts of it were left vacant for years. The hotel changed hands in 2011, and it underwent a 45 million dollar renovation. It reopened in 2012. It now has 92 apartments in addition to 57 hotel rooms, restaurants, banquet facilities, a working brewery, and retail space.
Speaking of the name we also have Lafayette Square. The main attraction there is the Soldiers & Sailors Monument
It was difficult to capture the next building because it was an entire block long and 10 stories high. Built in 1895, it was hailed as the largest office building in the world. Its namesake is Joseph Ellicott who was an agent for the Holland Land Company, it owned all of Western New York at one time. Ellicott is responsible for laying out the streets of Buffalo, it was a 1804 radial street plan modeled after L’Enfant’s plan for Washington, D.C. The facade of the building certainly features plenty of Terra cotta ornamentation and was designed by master architect Daniel Burnham (the man who designed New York’s Flatiron building).
Here we have the old post office. It opened in 1901 and served its purpose until 1963. It is now thriving as the downtown Branch of the Erie County Community College. The style of the building can be described as Victorian Gothic/Richardsonian Romanesque. The tower rises 244 feet above the street. Hand carved gargoyles, pinnacles, finials, animal heads and eagles are on each of the facades.
Note the bison heads that are included on the facade:
Old County Hall was built between 1871 and 1876. Designed as Victorian Romanesque, a style known for large arched windows, tall central towers and grand masonry. The central tower which contains four clocks rises to 209 feet. The tower is flanked by four statues each 16 feet high and were cut from a 30-ton granite block. They represent Justice, Agriculture, Mechanical Arts and Commerce. This building used to serve city hall until 1932, when Buffalo City Hall opened. City hall operations moved but it is still used for county operations as well as judiciary for New York State.
Completed in 1923 Statler Hotel blended Italian and English Renaissance influences. It also featured the modern innovations, notably a bath in every room, that made Statler hotels the new standard of lodging in America. Statler is renowned as one of the foremost hotel innovators in American history. The company he founded built ten hotels; six of these properties are still functioning hotels, one is an apartment complex, only three have been demolished. This one in particular became the city’s most luxurious hotel, and for decades remained the social center for Buffalonians.
If you look closely at the below building the most striking feature is the two Statue of Liberty replicas, one facing west, and the other facing east representing Buffalo’s strategic location on the Great Lakes. They stand 36 feet tall and are illuminated at night. You would have guessed it that building’s name is the Liberty building and was built in 1925 for Liberty Bank to serve as their headquarters. Now Liberty Bank wasn’t always its name, was originally called the German American Bank but after WWI association with Germany became unpopular so it had to shed its image and what better way to capitalize than erecting Statue of Liberty statues.
The Dun building at 10 stories tall was one of Buffalo’s first high-rise, steel-framed buildings when it was erected in 1895. It is interesting because of its efficient use of a triangular-shaped lot: it was constructed like the flatiron building in New York City, coming to a point on one corner.
The Guaranty Trust Building was completed in 1896 and is still considered one of the most significant early skyscrapers in the United States. It was designed by the father of skyscrapers himself Louis Sullivan. Though it opened as the Guaranty Building, the Prudential Insurance company became its principal occupant by 1898. Thus, the building name changed to the Prudential Building. The building suffered during the Great Depression and deteriorated mightily throughout much of the twentieth-century. Its current occupant since 2002, the Hodgson Russ law firm, enjoys its own rich history, having operated in Buffalo since 1817.
Originally the City of Buffalo’s Police Headquarters, the Police Apartments is now 130 luxury apartment units. The cells from the former police lockup remain as novelty workspaces for tenants and as a tribute to the history of the building.
Below is another marvel by architect Minora Yamasaki whose works we’ve seen in Seattle and Minneapolis, one M&T Plaza built in 1966. Yamasaki was commissioned for the World Trade Center before One M&T Plaza. M&T’s building was completed first so World Trade Center got the benefit of One M&T Plaza serving as a scale model to it.
For the below old Industrial Bank Building the first things that pops out from the facade of the is the intricate Art Deco frieze. Features “Gods of industry,” contemporary images in background and Egyptian figures in forefront. It was constructed in 1929 and is today offices.
Ancient Landmark Building was erected in 1904. For years, it has functioned as a destination restaurant on the first floor while the second floor boasts a jaw-dropping 350 person event hall with 34′ ceilings and an adjoining fireplace lounge. The hall was used by the Freemasons until the 1970s.
First opened to the public in 1926, Shea’s underwent several changes in ownership, as American culture evolved over time. By the mid-1970s, Shea’s had fallen into disrepair and plans were underway to tear down the building. Citizens banded together to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Today, it remains a vibrant part of the Buffalo entertainment scene, hosting everything from Broadway plays to big-name comedians to a wide range of live music shows.
The Rand Building is the third tallest building in Buffalo. At the time it was built in 1929, it was the tallest in the city at a height of 391 feet. It has been suggested that the Rand Building was the inspiration for the Empire State Building. The building is named for George Rand, a prominent Buffalo financier in the 1920s. Buffalo radio stations WGR and WKBW moved into the building when it opened and remained tenants until the late 1950’s. Incidentally, the ‘GR’ in WGR stands for George Rand.
Buffalo Savings Bank was created in 1846 for the common man. Customers of the bank were to be ‘tradesmen, clerks, mechanics, laborers, minors, servants and others’ according to their charter. The Bank’s original building burned in 1865, with only the vault remaining. The Bank used a temporary location for 40 years until the Beaux Arts-style building was finished between 1899 and 1901. Originally dome was covered in copper which turned green. It wasn’t until 1953 that gold paint was added to it. With that the Buffalo Savings Bank rebranded itself as Goldome in 1983 but ended up folding less than a decade later in 1991 due to the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s. The assets of Goldome were split between Key Bank and M&T Bank. The building itself was bought by M&T Bank with the complex now serving as a bank branch for M&T.
With its distinctive exterior lighting and as the host of the annual New Year’s Eve ball drop, the Electric Tower opened in 1912 is one of the most recognizable buildings in downtown Buffalo. We think of Buffalo as the City of Light at the turn of the century, and electric use did grow quickly in New York State in the early 1900s, there were still about 21% of New Yorkers that did not have electric power by 1921. The building was advantageously situated to be seen from many parts of the city and served to advertise the use of electricity. For nearly a century, the Electric Tower was the place to go for paying electric bills here and also buy electric appliances and lightbulbs.
You cannot mention electricity without mentioning Nikola Tesla. On November 16, 1896 the inventor flipped the switch that made Buffalo the first electrified city in the world. This first long-distance transmission of alternating current (AC) electricity helped power Buffalo’s street cars and light up its streets and it wasn’t long before the entire world was electrified using Tesla’s innovations. He is honored with a statue and park bearing his name downtown.
Now we’ll start looking at the industry that shaped Buffalo. At 600,000 square feet, below is the third largest building in Buffalo, Trico Plant #1 stretches for two blocks. Story behind it is that in 1916 theaterical manager John R. Oishei is driving on a rainy night in 1916 and struck a bicyclist. Although the cyclist was not injured, Oishei became obsessed with devising a better way to keep his windshield clear. From that he founded Trico Products Corporation in 1917 to market the market the windshield wiper to a larger consumer base. The adoption of his wiper by Pierce-Arrow, Cadillac, Packard, and Lincoln greatly helped Oishei’s early success. Trico Plant #1 was mostly constructed in the 1920s and 1930s of reinforced concrete. The Trico business continued to operate at the building until 1998, when it transferred most of its manufacturing facilities to Texas and Mexico. Currently there is a proposal to turn the building into a hotel and apartments.
The Fairmont Creamery Company founded in 1884 is one of four national dairies and headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska with branches stretching from the Dakotas to Buffalo. The Buffalo building erected in 1920 was designated as a cold storage facility. Its been converted today to a mixed-use complex.
We enter now an interesting part of Buffalo, Silo City — the name officially given to a campus of four different silo complexes grouped around the inside of one of the final twists in the Buffalo River.
When you zoom in you will notice an entertainment venue replete with climbing walls and ziplines stretching inside and outside grain elevators painted like a huge six-pack of Labatt Blue beer cans. The complex also includes a mini amusement park complete with a 100 ft ferris wheel
General Mill’s Buffalo factory is a large scale grain mill and cereal production facility, most notably producing Gold Medal brand flour, Wheaties, Cheerios and other General Mills brand cereals. We learned a lot of about mills in my coverage of Minneapolis. You will be surprised to know that by 1930, Buffalo surpassed Minneapolis as the flour milling center of the U.S. Starting in 1903, the Washburn-Crosby Milling Company started buying up milling and storage facilities along the City Ship Canal. Two factors in Buffalo’s favor influenced Washburn-Crosby to build in Buffalo:
- cheaper to ship wheat than it was flour via the Great Lakes and by rail.
- favorable tariffs permitted Canadian wheat to be milled in the U.S.
I leave you with a couple more captures of the mills and grain elevators you find in this area.
Buffalo Central Terminal opened in 1929 to serve more than 200 trains and 10,000 passengers daily. The last train left the station in 1979 and five years later it joined national and state registers of historical places. Work is underway to develop the site. The challenges it is facing is being two and a half miles from downtown but revitalizing the terminal would spur new housing, workforce opportunities, and business development in Buffalo’s East Side.
As far as cultural attractions go, the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site is where Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States. This occurred after the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley while Theodore Roosevelt was Vice President. While presidential inaugurations take place on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., given the tragic circumstances it became an emergency inauguration. Theodore Roosevelt was vacationing in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. After learning that President William McKinley was not expected to survive, he embarked on the exhausting 15-hour journey to Buffalo. Inauguration took place at the Greek Revival mansion of his friend Ansley Wilcox. After the Wilcox family sold the property, it had a brief stint as a restaurant between 1938–1959 and finally opened as a museum in 1971.
Another one to check out is the Buffalo History Museum. It is the sole remaining structure from the 1901 Pan American Exposition. The museum features exhibits and an extensive collection of artifacts, manuscripts, books and photographs chronicling the development of Buffalo and the Niagara Frontier.
If you wander outside the museum you will come across a David statue, standing 17 ft tall, was originally exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. It is a replica of the original that was completed by Michelangelo in 1504 and located in Florence, Italy, and is considered to be one of the finest sculptures in the world. This statue was donated to the city by a Buffalo businessman, very similar to Sioux Falls SD’s version.
Connecticut Street Armory is a massive castle-like structure built in 1899 out of Medina NY sandstone. Today it houses administrative offices and the 74th Regiment of the New York National Guard.
Richardson-Olmstead Complex is widely considered one of Buffalo’s most important buildings combining talents of :
- architect Henry Hobson Richardson, the father of Richardsonian Romanesque architectural style
- landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City, as well as Buffalo’s beautiful system of parks and parkways
They both worked together to design the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. On November 15, 1880, formally opened its doors to patients. The eastern wing of the hospital was complete with five majestic wing buildings to house up to 300 patients. The large central Administration Building soared over the neighboring community with its two towers. Construction on the western wing, also to include five connected wing buildings which completed in 1896. It continued operating as a psychiatric hospital until the mid-1970s. In recent years, the site has been undergoing a process of revitalization and now features a new hotel/conference center and an architectural center, both of which occupy the main part of the old building with the iconic towers.
The Kleinhans Music Hall is a concert hall in Buffalo that serves as the main concert and practice stage for the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as numerous other local music and cultural organizations. Eero Saarinen and his father designed the building and it was completed in 1940. The hall is considered one of the most acoustically perfect halls in the world as the hall’s parabolic ceiling enables audience members in back rows to have a clear, instantaneous auditory experience.
Just when you thought the architecture roster wasn’t star-studded enough, enter the mix Frank Lloyd Wright. He was commissioned to do many residential projects one of which was for Darwin Martin, top executive for the legendary Larkin Soap Factory, a rapidly growing soap and mail order corporation at the turn of the 19th century. Wedged between historic homes in the Parkside neighborhood, the 15,000-square-foot, eight-bedroom Martin House — plus the Gardener’s Cottage and a home built for Darwin’s sister and brother-in-law — sits on a one-acre lot. It was completed in 1903 and Martin was thrilled with Wright’s design, despite the fact that the architect nearly tripled the original budget for the house. It changed ownership after Darwin Martin’s death and fell into a period of neglect and vandalism. The Martin House Restoration Corporation established in 1992 acquired and restored the exterior of the entire Darwin D. Martin complex. Today the Martin house is open to the public to enjoy as a museum.
If you cannot get enough of Frank Lloyd Wright houses check out his take on boathouses. In 1905 a request came to build a boathouse to serve the University of Wisconsin crew team. Wright only completed the design but it but never came to fruition since university couldn’t raise the necessary funds. Fast forward to 2007, a Wright apprentice from 1953–57 is selected to realize the Fontana Boathouse in Buffalo, NY.
