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 great eastern leaders of academic architecture were brought to Buffalo at the end of the century. Their grandiose, symmetrical style is in general more institutional than domestic; their correct, cold detail is cheapened by their lack of feeling for materials. Order and regularity, however, were needed after the excesses of picturesqueness. Yet order, as the Chicago school was displaying, could be creative and not necessarily an imitation from the European past.