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Old 03-21-2017, 10:00 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
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From the Buffalo News By Cathaleen Curtiss Thu, Mar 16, 2017;

Quote:
If there's one thing Western New York does not lack, it's buildings worth exploring. Buffalo News photographers are going inside, outside, above and, on occasion, underneath local landmarks for The News' ongoing "A Closer Look" series. These galleries take you behind the scenes, into rooms that most people do not have access to, and help you discover details you may have overlooked.

Here's what we have highlighted so far. If you have an idea for a building or landmark you would like to see showcased, please email ccurtiss@buffnews.com.

Our Lady of Victory Basilica Shortly after a fire severely damaged St. Patrick's Church in Lackawanna, Father Nelson Baker dreamed of replacing it with a grander building dedicated to Our Lady of Victory. Construction began in 1921 and finished by Christmas in 1925. Measuring 80 feet in diameter and close to 120 feet from the floor, the dome contains the painting of the Assumption and Coronation of the Blessed Mother. Take a look inside one of Western New York's most beautiful churches. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

The Richardson Olmsted Complex Designed by one of America's premier architects, Henry Hobson Richardson, in concert with the landscape team of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, the building was completed in the late 1800s as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. It is currently being transformed into the Buffalo Architecture Center and Hotel Henry Urban Resort Conference Center. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

The Market Arcade Is one of Buffalo's most unusual and decorative spaces, a 1892 beaux arts and neo-classical building that is considered the best surviving example of an early retail establishment in the city. G.B. Marshall commissioned Buffalo architects E.B. Green and W.S. Wicks to model the building after an arcade in London. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)


The Colored Musicians Club The oldest running African-American club in the United States. In its heyday, it hosted jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis and many more. Jazz music can still be heard in the upper room. A century ago, eight local black musicians formed their own union, Local 533. That local soon morphed into the Colored Musicians Club, which later moved to the corner of Broadway and Michigan Avenue. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)

Karpeles Manuscript Museum: North Hall Once the former First Church of Christ, Scientist. The congregation commissioned Chicago architect Solon S. Beman to design the building at 220 North St. The structure was built in 1911. The Christian Scientists occupied the building until the early 1980s, it was purchased by the Museum in December 2003. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

The Guaranty Building Buffalo businessman Hascal T. Taylor commissioned Louis Sullivan to build the “finest office building in the country. The Guaranty Building was completed in 1896 by the Guaranty Construction Co. of Chicago. It was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1975 and represents the beginning of a uniquely American style of architecture. (Robert Kirkham/Buffalo News)

Statler City The Statler Hotel, designed by George B. Post & Sons, was completed in 1923, near Niagara Square. It was the second and largest hotel opened in Buffalo by Ellsworth Statler and was once the grand hotel of Buffalo. Mark Croce, the building's current owner, has restored three levels of the building to date, with more changes in store. (Mark Mulville/The Buffalo News)

The Riviera Theatre and Performing Arts Center The theater in North Tonawanda is owned and operated by the Riviera Theatre and Organ Preservation Society, its mission is to preserve and maintain the historic theater and its Mighty Wurlitzer organ and to promote the performing arts. Billed as the “showplace of the Tonawandas,” the theatre was built in 1926 by the Yellen Family. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

The Michael J. Dillon U.S. Courthouse Renamed in 1987 in honor of Internal Revenue Service employee Michael J. Dillon, the courthouse occupies an entire block along Niagara Square and will become the City of Buffalo's new public safety complex. Construction of the seven-story sandstone and steel courthouse in 1936 was part of the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)

The Darwin Martin House Designed by renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright and completed in 1905 for Darwin D. Martin and his family. The most substantial and highly developed of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses in the Eastern United States. The multi-structure estate was placed on the National Historic Landmark in 1986 and receives visitors from around the world. (Sharon Cantillon/Buffalo News)

Buffalo City Hall The Art Deco building, completed in 1931, is rich with artwork. "Frontiers Unfettered by Any Frowning Fortress" by artist William de Leftwich-Dodge visable over the entrance way, depicts Buffalo as an international gateway to Canada. The most significant murals are in the first-floor lobby; however paintings, artwork, and elaborate tile work extend throughout the building. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

Ellicott Square The Ellicott Company commissioned architect Daniel H. Burnham of Chicago in 1895 to design an "office block" in downtown Buffalo. The building is 144 feet tall, comprising the entire block between Main Street and Washington Street. It was the largest office building in the world when it opened on May 30, 1896, at a cost of $3.5 million. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

Buffalo History Museum Built by architect George Cary in 1901 as the New York State Building for the Pan-American Exposition, it is constructed of white Vermont marble. The Secretary of the Interior designated the Historical Society building as a National Historic Landmark in 1997. It remains the most important surviving building from the Pan-American Exposition. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

Lafayette High School This treasure was the third high school built in Buffalo, and the oldest that still remains in its original building. The school was designed by Buffalo architects Esenwein and Johnson and constructed in 1901 by Mosier and Summers. Located in Buffalo's Upper West Side, the school opened on Sept. 10, 1903. In 1999, the LHS Alumni Association restored the building's landmark cupola. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site The Ansley Wilcox Mansion was approved as a National Historic Site in 1966. The house was originally built as a military barracks in 1838. Dexter Rumsey purchased the house in 1883 as a wedding gift for his daughter, the family lived here until 1933. From 1939 to 1959 it was the Kathryn Lawrence Tearoom . Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office in the home on Sept. 14, 1901, following the assassination of President William McKinley. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

Shea’s Buffalo Theatre This National Historic Site was designed by architects C.W. and George L. Rapp. Its interior was designed by Tiffany Studios and features a Neo-Spanish Baroque design that is modeled after a European opera house. Shea's Buffalo Theatre was saved from demolition in the 1970s and placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. Over the past 18 years, Shea's has undergone a $20 million restoration. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Parkside Candy Company After 89 years the 1927 candy shop is getting restored. The $230,000 restoration project began on Aug. 15, 2016. Located at the corner of Main Street and West Winspear Avenue in University Heights, Parkside Chocolate was designed by architect G. Morton Wolfe, based on the Adams Revival style of 18th-century Scottish architect and interior designer Robert Adam. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Edward M. Cotter The Buffalo Fire Department's fireboat was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996 and is believed to be the oldest active fireboat in the world, just recently celebrating its 116th birthday. She was originally named the William S. Grattan when built in 1900 by the Crescent Shipyard in New Jersey. The boat was rebuilt and renamed the Edward M. Cotter in 1953. (Derek Gee/Buffalo News)

Hayes Hall With its weathered-gray stone and clock tower, Hayes Hall has long been the most recognizable structure on the University at Buffalo’s South Campus. Constructed in the late 1870s as an insane asylum, the University of Buffalo acquired the building in 1909 to make it the cornerstone of a new campus. The building reopened earlier this year after a $44 million overhaul. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)

Erie County Hall Designed by Architect Andrew J. Warner and constructed from 1872-1875, the building underwent extensive renovation in 1925 by Harold Jewett Cook, a local architect renowned for his bank designs. A three-year, $3.4 million restoration project was completed at Erie County Hall in 2015. President McKinley’s body laid in state in the building in 1901. (Mark Mulville/Buffalo News)
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Old 05-23-2017, 08:09 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
Reputation: 430
Default Where to go and what to see in the city

137 buildings on the National Register within the City of Buffalo;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation...falo,_New_York

Upcoming tours;
https://www.preservationbuffaloniaga...coming-events/

City neighborhoods;
City of Buffalo - Neighborhoods - Map Collection - University at Buffalo Libraries
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Buffalo

Inventory of historic buildings (really large .pdf file, slow download);
https://www.ci.buffalo.ny.us/Mayor/H...ervationSurvey
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Old 06-09-2017, 08:16 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
Reputation: 430
Default Buffalo's City Hall: No. 2 most beautiful in the US

From the Buffalo News;
Quote:
By Deidre Williams and Cindy Szymanski Thu, Jun 8, 2017

If you've ever been to City Hall, you've probably noticed what an architectural gem the building truly is. But now people outside of Buffalo know it, too. Curbed.com has listed the building as one of the 10 most beautiful city halls in the nation. The online publication, an arm of Vox Media, ranked Buffalo second to Austin, Texas. Buffalo's Art Deco City Hall was completed in 1931. At 398 feet high from the street to the top of the tower, it is one of the tallest municipal office buildings in the United States. It has 32 stories, 26 of which are usable office space.

Here's some of what Curbed had to say about Buffalo:
"This City Hall demonstrates two important aspects of the Art Deco movement: its emphasis on ornamentation and the practicality of its execution. For example, the building's 1,520 windows all open inward so that the windows can be cleaned from the inside – essentially making window washers obsolete."

In 1999, Buffalo City Hall was placed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places. The varied list spans both architectural styles and timeframes, and it also prioritized buildings outside of Washington, D.C., in order to highlight lesser-known structures, the website stated.

Other cities represented on the informal list include San Francisco, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
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Old 06-09-2017, 11:52 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
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For the record, here is the pathetic list of what was here, but isn't now due to stupidly, shortsightedness, lack of in-site and probably selfless greed (of the buildings that could of been saved). No, you can't save everything and some probably had a good reason to be torn down, but too many were and just shouldn't.

Lost Buildings — Preservation-Ready Sites Buffalo
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Old 07-12-2017, 08:39 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
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Default Buffalo gets the double-decker treatment

Transportation for the above.

From the Buffalo news;
Quote:
By Mark Sommer | July 4, 2017

Buffalo now has a touch of London's Piccadilly Circus. On Tuesday, pedestrians and bicyclists gawked at the sight of a red double-decker bus making its inaugural trip from the Outer Harbor. "Buffalo Double Decker Bus Tours" was written on the sides in black and white striping, with "Sightseeing Tours, Murder Mysteries and Tavern Tours" in smaller letters. "The bus in and of itself is an attraction. It's just cool," said Joel Dombrowski, the tour guide who wrote a popular guide book on Niagara Falls.

He imported the 1980 Leyland Olympian bus, which seats 74, from England and removed the windows from the upper level to offer a better view. Dombrowski, a former standup comedian, treats his tours like performances. "I've been trained along the way from people with Disney training, and their motto is, 'Everything must be a show,'" Dombrowski said. "All who enter must have a sense of humor" is painted above the bus' entrance.

"We carry about 70 people safely and about 100 people unsafely," Dombrowski began. "I should probably let you know, if you have any questions keep 'em to your damn selves. I just don't want to hear it. It's a little early in the morning. Don't be googling me either. Just take my word for stuff. Just believe me and don't be quizzing my wife."

Dombrowski, who lives in Clarence Center, was born in Riverside and grew up in Cheektowaga. "Like all Polish, you move to Cheektowaga. It's the law," he deadpanned. As the bus turned off Fuhrmann Boulevard, it headed toward a tunnel. "Hopefully we'll fit under it," Dombrowski said, feigning concern. "This is the first time we're doing this." The bus left from Wilkeson Pointe, motored over to Canalside and then into downtown, including Niagara Square, before returning over the Skyway to the Outer Harbor. The nearly 50 riders on the maiden trip came courtesy of Buffalo Underground, a meetup group organized by Melanie Chimento of Orchard Park.

"Everything about the tour was awesome," Kelly Germain of Holland said. "No one's ever seen the views off the Skyway this way because we were up so high." She wasn't alone in raving about the view of the waterfront and the lake from the 13 1/2-foot-tall double-decker, which towered over a metro bus that pulled up alongside on Court Street. "I have ridden my motorcycle over the Skyway many, many times, but I did not get the same view as I did off this bus," said Joe Germain, Kelly's husband. "I was in the front and got the best view!" gushed Margaret Rogers of Town of Tonawanda. "Going over the Skyway was absolutely fabulous." Alesandra Cartier of West Seneca said she rode a double-decker bus in England and found it "very amusing" to now do so in Buffalo.

The bus tours – in a city that already offers several history-themed tours – will be offered daily through July and August beginning Friday, with five different tours in all. The 90-minute tour "Canalside Waterfront Tour" and the two-hour "Old and New Buffalo," which includes admission to the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, will be held daily. "Historic Tavern Tour" will be offered Thursdays, "Drunk Buffalo Tour" on Fridays and "Murder Mystery – A Double Decker Death" aboard the bus on Saturdays.

The tours are $20 for the 90-minute tour, $25 for the two-hour tours and $30 for the murder mystery, which involves four costumed actors.
For more information, go to buffalodoubledeckerbus.com.
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Old 07-31-2017, 08:30 AM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
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To continue restoration, here is a site with lists of notable buildings saved & needed to be saved;

Saved Buildings — Preservation-Ready Sites Buffalo
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Old 08-02-2017, 04:48 PM
 
Location: The City of Buffalo!
937 posts, read 691,062 times
Reputation: 430
Default USA Today & the City of Buffalo

The older the city, which usually applies to cites in the Northeast, the more chances 'treasures' will be found. New isn't always better. Of course the list would be longer if it wasn't for so many buildings that were torn down due to shortsightedness from after WWII.

The article is here;
https://www.usatoday.com/story/trave...ure/517033001/

Quote:
Buffalo builds on architecture tourism
John Bordsen, Special for USA TODAY
July 28, 2017

BUFFALO — Crazy about American architecture? This is where to see commercial, residential and institutional buildings by America’s most revered trio of architects — H.H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright — all built during the city’s Gilded Age heyday. And the classic downtown is loaded with more fabulous survived/revived structures saved from the wrecking ball. Buffalo has long trumpeted architectural tourism, but upping that game this summer is the opening of Hotel Henry, an upscale hotel 3 miles north of downtown. It’s retrofitted into a hulking monolith built in the 1870s as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane. Add an after-dark thunderstorm and the exterior of the four-story, twin-towered main building looks ready to host cast and crew for a horror movie. Inside, though, common areas are already the domain of wedding events.

Local preservationists acquired the derelict property from the state and partnered with a local hotelier that has navigated National Historic Landmark restrictions to launch a chic “urban resort conference center.” High-ceiling rooms are fully wired and dressed in cutting-edge modern. Two or three former patient lodgings have been combined to form each new guest room. Wide and spruced-up corridors lead to small common areas and then to larger open areas in the towers. The hotel occupies a third of the asylum, which at peak capacity housed about 2,000 patients and staffers. Three things point to the Henry’s asylum origins: The still-in-place preservation-mandated floor plan makes for a maze worthy of any hospital. Original wooden hallway floors have, in places, necessarily been replaced. And — when dawn arrives — the amount of natural light is spectacular.

The old asylum was progressive in its design. For fire-safety reasons, wings were segmented into “pavilions” (hence the maze and scattered common areas); light was thought to be therapeutic for patients, so windows are enormous — so tall in high-ceiling guest rooms that pull-down blinds are remote-controlled.

Acres of green space abound outside the windows.
To pull this off 150 years ago, Henry H. Richardson was brought in to design the asylum. He is considered the first truly American architect; while the exterior looks Ivanhoe medieval, his tweaked Romanesque Revival design stressed functionality and native materials (the exterior is New York State sandstone). The Hotel Henry is named in his honor. To plan the grounds, Richardson turned to long-time collaborator Frederick Law Olmstead, considered the father of American landscape architecture, who designed Manhattan’s Central Park, the Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, and more.

The Wright stuff
Buffalo’s salad days were between the Civil War and World War I, when the city was America’s eighth-biggest and local big shots had a yen for promoting it. The Larkin soap empire was a major player in the early 1900s, and one of its top executives wanted to build a home near Richardson’s asylum, in an area Olmstead planned. He chose a young Midwestern architect whose design did not please neighbors who lived in Queen Anne-style dwellings and the like in the high-rolling Parkside area.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin house still stands out — a sprawling, low-slung two-story of Prairie School design. One of Wright’s first major projects in the eastern U.S., it proved a door-opener for more commissions and was the flexing ground for touches Wright refined on later iconic projects. The Martin complex holds the main house, two other original buildings and three reconstructions. The main residence — revolutionary in 1903-1905 — is an abode a tasteful bigwig could crave more than a century later. On guided tours from the new onsite visitor center, you see Wright’s plan to integrate living space with the outdoors. A pergola at the back of the main residence leads to a conservatory flanked by a carriage house and sister’s smaller dwelling. Note the profusion of Wright’s casement windows and decorative motifs.

Though the Martin complex draws more than 30,000 visitors a year, it’s off the radar for many Wright fans because it was abandoned for a period (the Martins lost their shirt during the Depression). That makes the 15-year restoration all the more interesting: Materials, technologies and artisanship had to match the 1907 standards. Woodwork in the main house — there are 8.5 miles of trim — had to be white oak, stained. Special roof tiles had to be imported from France. A glass facing on a fireplace had been crafted by a long-gone company in Chicago; restorationists got what they required from that firm’s still-in-business century-old rival. For reconstructed exteriors, custom-molded bricks of varying hues were pre-palliated to copy Wright’s arrangement.

Wright was difficult to work with, the Martins learned. He demanded and received final say on décor and furniture, what grew in the garden, and so on. As house executive director Mary Roberts says, “Frank Lloyd Wright was a freak for the details, but the genius is in the details.” The soap magnate nonetheless remained friends with Wright — and hired him 20 years later to design the Martins’ summer home, on a bluff just south of Buffalo. Though smaller and less extravagant, Graycliff is a stunning relic another preservation group is restoring.

The preserved downtown
The link between Romanesque Revival Richardson and radical Wright is Louis Sullivan — the “father of the skyscraper” and the third icon of American architecture. He learned from Richardson and mentored Wright. Sullivan’s main accomplishment in downtown Buffalo is the Guaranty Building (1896), a 13-story, steel-frame masterpiece not as stark as later skyscrapers evolved. The external vertical lines are eased by elaborate terra cotta panels. Within are a stained-glass skylight and marble mosaics. The building was threatened with demolition in the 1970s, restored a decade later and renovated in 2008. Take a walking tour of downtown; you can see more than 50 notable buildings from the 1830s to the 1980s. Explore Buffalo’s Masters of American Architecture tour visits 10 to 12 of them.

Among the coolest:
• The massive Daniel Burnham-designed 1896 Ellicott Square Building was billed at opening as the largest commercial office building in the world and contained restaurants and an early cinema for a reason, Explore Buffalo director Brad Hahn says: “It was promoted that people could do two days of work in one day because they didn’t need to go far from their desks.”

• The dome of the Buffalo Savings Bank (1901) retains its original glint from 140,000 sheets of gold leaf. Across the street, at 14 stories, the 1912 Electric Tower remains a lit-at-night landmark. It was inspired by the long-gone Tower of Light at the 1901 World’s Fair, which sported a dome inspired by the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria, Egypt. That 1901 Pan American Exposition is where anarchist Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley.

• Hahn notes that the Old County Hall (a Gothic Revival pile from the 1870s designed by Richardson’s supervising architect at the Buffalo State Asylum) was where McKinley’s body lie in state — and where Czolgosz was tried and sentenced. Wake, trial and death-sentencing took a total of 11 days.
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