While visiting Ada Place back on a brutally grim April day, I stumbled on this beauty. It is a real diamond in the rough. It is age worn, but its details are remarkably intact. It has been covered (probably since the 1940's) with dull asphalt siding. This material was probably sold as a modern miracle siding meant to reduce maintenance.
The need for maintenance was surely reduced along with most of the beauty of the lucky recipient. This type of siding is like a double-edged sword to delicate buildings. On the one hand the building is made ugly by its application, making it less attractive to users and ultimately contributing to its decline. While, on the other hand it often preserves precious details below during a period of disinvestment. I think the house is owner occupied, which is good. This may be why the building still exists.
I was here along with a small group of tourists taking David Torke's regularly scheduled East Side "Tour de Neglect" (I highly recommend this tour. Check out Fix Buffalo http://fixbuffalo.blogspot.com for details) While we mingled and ogled the local sites, an older woman poked her head out and asked what was going on. That is the power of people with a stake in a neighborhood.
The shape of this house is fairly simple as Victorians go, but a wonderful central bay sets it apart. The bay is decorated with carvings of unusual composition, depicting stylized grape vines. Even though the trim and carvings have obviously not been painted for quite a few years they are in quite good condition. Little or no detail has been lost to deterioration. Capping of the bay is a very rare cantilevered roof covering a third floor lookout. Spectacular! Rounding out the composition is a set of very refined porch columns, also unusual in form, with their exaggerated taper out from the very nice ionic capitals. Imagine this house in mint condition, with Ada place restored. It could be a favorite Garden Walk street.
If you can't make David Torke's tour, you can find this house at
the north end of Ada Place, at the corner of Lyth Place.
Restored this would be a stunning house. The siding is not always a good thing either to preserve. When we had that stuff removed on our house, over the years a little moisture got in and 800 linier feet of siding had to be replaced becouse it had gone spongy. The other problem was to put that horrid siding up, any ornamental siding was taken off to make it flush, luckily, the "shadows were intact to get new millwork done. Still, all work aside, homes like this are worth the finished product.Hope to see a picture of it one day redone.