1872 – 1900

Henry-Russell Hitchcock Jr.

A new and more sophisticated age opened in Buffalo when F. L. Olmstead was called in 1869 to lay out parkways and parks to the north of the city in the area toward which the residential district was rapidly expanding. These parkways, with their repeated rows of giant trees, are the finest in America, and form the setting of as handsome and varied a group of late nineteenth and early twentieth century houses as are to be found in this country.

With Olstead came H. H. Richardson, destined to be the great leader of American architecture from the seventies to the nineties. In the Dorsheimer house he was only feeling his way, on the basis of his French training and superior sense of proportion, out of the Victorian morass.

In the State Hospital, his earliest important commission, and one of his largest on which he worked for almost a decade, he really found, in the years between 1870 and 1872, his personal style. This style was much imitated here and elsewhere in the next score of years. It is interesting to follow the stages of his self discovery from the splendidly articulated plan through the awkward first facade project with its ugly detail to the final superb romantic mass of the central pavilion. The bold silhouette, the balanced proportions, and individual fusion of the Romanesque and late Gothic detail, are already almost completely mature.

Richardson’s project for Trinity Church was never executed, which is perhaps as well. The exterior was still over-picturesque, but the Byzantine space of its interior are echoed in more suave and historical form in Green and Wicks’ First Presbyterian Church. The exterior of this is an excellent, if somewhat rembling composition wholly unrelated to the interior, done in the supposedly “Revived Romanesque” style derived from Richardson’s mature work.

A project for a Y.M.C.A in Buffalo by Richardson came to nothing. The Gratwick house, however, was one of his last, if not one of his most satisfactory stone mansions. Indeed, one may well prefer two of the chief Richardsonian houses by other architects, the Hamlin House, by Martin and Burdette, and the Michael House, by A. Phillips Rinn. The same can hardly be said for the younger Eiditz’s Public Library, in which much of the mid-century turgidity remains.

The wholly remarkable quality of the Coatestworth-Pardee-Wright house in Soldier’s Place, is due to the fact that the Buffalo architect, Edward Lansing, made what is practically a line for line copy of Richardson’s finest wooden house, the Stoughton house in Cambridge.

In the nineties Richardson’s pupils, McKim, Mead and White, leaders of the reaction against his picturesque, medieval style, built several houses in Buffalo. Possibly the implication of the academic reaction with its return to formal symmetry and archeological correctness of detail are more effectively presented in the work of George Cary and in many characteristic houses of the nineties and the first quarter of the present century.

Employing Upjohn, Richardson, Eidlitz and McKim, Mead and White, and with her own architects educated in the east, Buffalo might seem to have become architecturally, in the late nineteenth century, an eastern city. She turned her back on the elevators, those great industrial monuments which continued to speak of Buffalo’s close connection with the middle west and displayed the possibilities of building for new purposes on a new scale. Yet, as a matter of fact, the two best known buildings in Buffalo of this period are by Chicago architects and serve to make plain that Buffalo was even more, around 1900, the gateway to the middle west than she had been earlier.

The Guaranty Building, now the Prudential, is not Sullivan’s first skyscraper, but many find it his best. Built in 1896 it makes use of the new skeleton construction developed in Chicago a decade previous. It was soon to revolutionize completely American building methods. A second skyscraper built in Buffalo the same year by another famous Chicago architect, was the Ellicott Square Building by Burnham. At the time it was the largest office building in the world. While Burnham attempted, like the eastern architects of the day, to clothe the new construction and the new scale of his monster building in the academic Renaissance vocabulary of masonry introduced by McKin, Mead and White, Sullivan continued with his Guaranty Building the development of a free and expressive clothing of a metal frame. He had first tried this successfully six years earlier with the Wainwright Building in St. Louis.

The grace and elegance of his design, the vertical expression so appropriate to a building rising isolated like a tower above its neighbors, are not lost in the web of rich ornamentation which Sullivan used on his terra-cotta surfaces. Sullivan was not concerned with major problems of design alone; indeed, he was more interested in the new grammar of ornament. Some of the ornamental work on this building, particularly the iron work of the elevator cage, represents perhaps, the last really great work in decorative design created in the western world.

— by Henry-Russell Hitchcock

1872 – 1900 Architecture

Old First Presbyterian Church

Old First Presbyterian Church

The Circle architect: Green and Wicks(Edward Brodhead Green & William Sydney Wicks) owner: First Presbyterian Church years built: 1889-1891 A large and elaborate Richardsonian design, somewhat rambling in composition, but with excellent detail and a remarkably...

William Hoyt House

William Hoyt House

1150/1180 Amherst Street alternate name: Ellicott Goodrich House architect: Joseph Ellicott (?) Charles Cary (Addition 1910) owner: Joseph Ellicott Guy H. Goodrich Charles Gerber John C. Glenny William B. Hoyt Church Home of the German Evangelical Churches of Buffalo...

Blocher Monument

Blocher Monument

Forest Lawn Cemetery architect: John Blocher (?) owner: John Blocher years built: 1884 demolished: N/A The Blocher monument was built by John Blocher as a memorial to his only son, Nelson. The former was a wealthy shoe dealer who lived at the corner of Huron Street...

Bennett Grain Elevator

Bennett Grain Elevator

Erie Street architect: Robert Dunbar owner: David S. Bennett years built: 1885 demolished: Early 1900s While the battle of the styles was fought out uptown and downtown, Dunbar continued to build great elevators along the lake front. They were larger than the grain...

Ellicott Square Building

Ellicott Square Building

283 Main Street architect: D.H. Burnham & Company (Daniel Burnham and Charles Atwood) owner: Ellicott Company years built: 1897 demolished: N/A When it was built, the Ellicott Square Building was the largest commercial edifice in the world. Burnham, like Sullivan...

Prudential Building

Prudential Building

28 Church Street alternate name: Joseph Ellicott architect: Louis Sullivan owner: The Guaranty Construction Company years built: 1896 demolished: N/A In 1896 two skyscrapers, the Prudential Building and the Ellicott Square Building were built in Buffalo by two great...

William C. Warren House

William C. Warren House

173 North St alternate name: The White Mansion architect: George Cary owner: William C. WarrenLillia Derriel (1937) years built: 1895 demolished: N/A Although the detail is rather heavy for the size of the house and the light brick and terra-cotta trim have not aged...

George Williams House

George Williams House

672 Delaware Avenue at North Street architect: McKim, Mead, White owner: George L. Williams (1899)Edward H. Butler (1905)William C. Baird Foundation (1974)Roswell Park Hospital Delaware North (1979)Varity Corp (1990)UB (1999) years built: 1899 demolished: N/A The...

Buffalo Savings Bank

Buffalo Savings Bank

Main Street and Genesee Street architect: Green and Wicks(Edward Brodhead Green & William Sydney Wicks) owner: Buffalo Savings BankM&T Bank years built: 1900 demolished: N/A Richardson’s picturesque, monumental style was succeeded by the academic style of his...

174 Regiment Armory

174 Regiment Armory

Prospect Park, Connecticut Street alternate names: Connecticut Street Armory architect: Capt. Williams LansingMax G. Beierl Issac G. Perry (State Architect) owner: New York National Guard years built: 1897-1899 demolished: N/A The armories of the 1890s were the last...

Erie County Savings Bank

Erie County Savings Bank

Church and Franklin architect: George Brown Post owner: Erie County Savings Bank years built: 1893 demolished: 1968 One of the latest big commercial buildings to employ solid masonry construction rather than a metal skeleton. The groupings of four stories of windows...

Buffalo Public Library

Buffalo Public Library

Washington Street, Opposite Lafayette Square architect: Cyrus L.W. Eidlitz owner: Young Men's Association (Not YMCA)Buffalo Public Library (1897) years built: 1887 demolished: 1963 (?) A very coarse, clumsy Richardsonian design, it is confused in plan and badly...

Church of St. Louis

Church of St. Louis

Main and Edward(780 Main Street) architect: William Schickel and Issac E. Ditmars owner: Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo years built: 1886-1889 demolished: N/A An elaborate Gothic Revival design of German inspiration by New York architects, it is richer in detail...

Coatsworth-Pardee Wright House

Coatsworth-Pardee Wright House

66 Soldier's Place architect: A Phillips Rinn owner: Edward Michael years built: 1893 A very Richardsonian house distinguished for its simple detail in granite and brick.

Edward Michael House

Edward Michael House

741 Delaware architect: James H. Marling and Herbert C. Burdett owner: William Hamlin years built: 1889 demolished: 1937 The picturesque composition, the large windows, and restrained detail of this house by Buffalo architects compare favorably with those of the...

William Hamlin House

William Hamlin House

William Hamlin House architect: James H. Marling and Herbert C. Burdett owner: William Hamlin years built: 1889 demolished: 1937 The picturesque composition, the large windows, and restrained detail of this house by Buffalo architects compare favorably with those of...

William H. Gratwick House

William H. Gratwick House

Delaware and Lexington alternate name: Richardson-Olmsted Complex architect: Henry Hobson Richardson years built: 1895 demolished: 1876 Almost the last of Richardson’s stone mansions, this was exaggeratedly feudal. Although very impressive, it was inferior as a...

Buffalo State Hospital

Buffalo State Hospital

Forest Avenue and Elmwood Avenue alternate name: Richardson-Olmsted Complex arcitecht: Henry Hobson Richardson years built: 1895 "The general plan of this institution displays the salutory discipline of the French tradition. The splendid, solid mass and picturesque...

Buffalo German Insurance Company

Buffalo German Insurance Company

Lafayette Square and Main Street architect: Richard Waite owner: Buffalo German Insurance Company years built: 1874 demolished: 1957 The development of the use of cast iron in Buffalo was slow. Cast iron facades, so characteristic of the mid-century in eastern cities,...