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Category: Buffalo City Hall

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America’s most beautiful city

Buffalo’s City Hall. Finished at the start of the Great Depression, it raises a fist to the world. Its tile bands and frieze work are characteristic for Buffalo architecture.
This week, in honor of Dyngus Day, I’m concentrating on my home town, Buffalo, New York.

A few years ago, an architect friend of mine seemed strangely excited to be visiting Buffalo. Since I grew up there, I take it for granted. It was interesting to see it through an informed visitor’s eyes.
The story of Buffalo’s architecture starts with economic boom. By the turn of the last century, Buffalo was the eighth largest city in the United States, a major railroad hub, and the most important grain-milling center in the country.
A postcard of the lake at Delaware Park, circa 1906.
All that money meant that some of the nation’s most important architects were hired to work there.  Its parks and parkways were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. Fans of New York’s Central Park will find echoes of it in Buffalo’s lovely Delaware Park.
The Guaranty Building (now called the Prudential Building) was an early skyscraper designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. Completed in 1896, it is a combination of modernism and the terra-cotta ornamentation that is so prevalent in Buffalo.
Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building is covered in warm red terracotta tile.
Frank Lloyd Wright built the Darwin Martin house in the city. His Greycliff, a summer estate south of Buffalo, has been restored to its former glory. Sadly, his Larkin Administration Building (where my mother once worked) was demolished in 1950 to make a truck stop.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building is now gone, but other examples of his work live on.
H. H. Richardson designed the massive, Romanesque Buffalo State Hospital in 1870. He was working along the principles of psychiatrist Thomas Story Kirkbride, who believed in a philosophy of Moral Treatment for mental patients. The building itself was meant to be curative, with sunshine, beauty and fresh air aiding in treatment.
Buffalo Insane Asylum.
Kleinhans Music Hall was endowed by the owners of a men’s clothing store in the city. It was designed by Eliel and Eero Saarinen and is widely considered one of the best music halls in the United States.
The grain elevator was invented in Buffalo in the 1840s by Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar. (Since the grain would be moved along by packet boat on the Erie Canal, this is also an early example of cross-docking.) The Buffalo waterfront is now infested with hulking remnants of these from various periods, which seem to fascinate industrial historians. I would prefer a beach, myself.
Then there is my personal favorite: City Hall. Finished in 1931, it is a fist raised to the world. At 378 feet in height, it is one of the biggest municipal buildings in the United States, and its location on Niagara Square (which is, of course, a circle) makes it tower over the cityscape.


Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The Witty City

The restored Hotel Lafayette.
My home town of Buffalo, NY is certainly one of the most beautiful cities in America. Each time I return, it’s in better repair.
Take the Lafayette Hotel, where I stayed this weekend. I remember it as a dilapidated building with one room open to the public. Local and out-of-town acts played the Lafayette Tap Room, using the former lunchroom as their Green Room. It was as if Father Time had locked the lunchroom door in 1960, not even bothering to clear away the dishes. I had lunch there yesterday; it is exquisitely restored to its 1911 grandeur. In contrast, the ballrooms, lobby and bar are all flamboyantly Art Deco in character.
Bar at the Hotel Lafayette.
Future Buffalo men watching the Bills from the mezzanine at the lunch room of the Hotel Lafayette (now run by the Pan American Grill people).
Next door is the former Adam, Meldrum and Anderson headquarters. There is a streak of whimsy in a city that maintains signage for a department store that’s been gone since 1994.
AM&A’s dress ads on Washington Street.
1912 Electric Tower.
Down the street is the Electric Tower, built in 1912 as a copy of the electric tower at Buffalo’s Pan American Exhibition. It is a Beaux-Arts confection of white terra cotta tile, an outstanding example in a city full of terra cotta architecture.
Buffalo’s City Hall
My favorite building, of course, is City Hall, which appears to be giving the finger to the world. In 1929, it was designed with a passive cooling system that took advantage of the prevailing Lake Erie breezes. Trendy, huh?
Stainless Steel, Aluminum, Monochrome I, Built to Live Anywhere, at Home Here (2010-2011, Nancy Rubins)
Somehow, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery has managed to continue obtaining fine work, despite the economic woes Buffalo has endured for the last half century. It has acquired an exuberant mash-up of aluminum canoes by Nancy Rubins for its front lawn. In a northern city threaded by fantastic waterways, it’s somehow topical (although, as the title indicates, that’s beside the point).
Across the street at the Burchfield-Penney Art Museum, there’s a son et lumière projection called “Front Yard.” Mercifully, it was cold, so our windows were rolled up. Thus we missed the soundtrack, which is computer-generated from local weather station readings. At the opening, “viewers were treated to work by ’70s heavyweights Hollis Frampton, Paul Sharits and Steina Vasulka,” reported Colin Dabkowski in the Buffalo News. (The visuals change constantly.)
That’s so Buffalo—centered around the weather and redolent of the age of mullets. All it needs is a paean to Lou Reed (dead yesterday at age 71) and a reference to sports and it would be the perfect Buffalo experience. But don’t think I’m critical. Both installations are more thoughtful and grounded than the anodyne sculptures by Tom Otterness acquired by the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, which are redolent of nothing more than a tag sale in Manhattan.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!