By Steven Dietz:
The Delaware Neighborhood Tour of Homes has sold out!
The residential architecture of Buffalo enjoys national attention, and yet we locals take for granted the beauty and taste that fills our avenues and streets. We bustle down Delaware Avenue in our cars and think we know the houses and their styles. But do we really know much beyond their majestic surfaces, or anything of the joy and suffering they've sheltered for a century or more?
Not unless we stop to savor these houses with their strong personalities and shifting moods. Most of us only imagine entering these homes and leaping into their histories--how they were built, and for whom, and with what values. This Saturday you can more than imagine; you are invited to reflect on eleven beautiful homes from Buffalo's late 19th to early 20th century in The Delaware Neighborhood Tour of Homes. Of the many fine tours of Buffalo architecture this summer, I think this one will leave the finest signature of an exceptional period in Buffalo's domestic architecture. In fact, I invite you personally to come inside the homes of Delaware Avenue and Oakland Place, including the home where I live with the spirits of 116 summers past since this home was built, the foundation dug out and laid by hand. I have tales from three centuries--the 19th, 20th, and 21st--of eccentric or successful or simply famous people in this house, including a former first Lady who spoke from our staircase.
The tour has been carefully crafted by the good people of Preservation Buffalo Niagara and the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site. It takes place Saturday August 21st from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is now self-guided. You will have a chance to meet some of the homeowners, hear their restoration stories, and relish the wide ranging styles, from an 1870s Italianate on Oakland Place to Grace Millard Knox's masterpiece at 800 Delaware (currently Computer Task Group). The mansions on Delaware now house non-profits, firms, and agencies. But each of them has breathtaking grandeur, including the baronial library of the Lockwood House, which sported one of the finest private libraries in the country (now happily ensconced at UB's Lockwood Library), to the ebullient marble staircase of the Knox house, which has the air of a Medici Palace.
On Oakland Place, the tour acquires a more intimate, evening cocktails feel. These are homes still privately lived in, and yet they retain the formal graciousness of a time when houses of the well-to-do were designed to privilege beauty over all else. There are turns from one room to the next where the eye catches a stunning new pattern of leaded tracery on a window sash. Or where the ceiling height blossoms into an exquisite, almost confectionery crown molding. John Cowper , the man who built City Hall, built his own home on Oakland Place in the 1920s. The living room walls are some four centuries old. Disassembled from Monmouth House in Wales, they are reincarnated in a grand 1920s drawing room. That's re-use with a late gilded age touch.
Yet what makes Buffalo's residential architecture so irresistible is the great spectrum we enjoy, from charming brick workman's cottages, to stout shingled Queen Annes, to the gilded age hauteur of the Knox and Goodyear homes. In this tour, the accent falls on the gilded. But as Buffalo re-imagines its future, and as we prepare to host the National Trust Conference next year, a steady look at this elegant grandeur is maybe the tonic we need as we measure what we've lost and what we've gained in this city garlanded by such beautiful homes yet wounded by tidal changes of fortune. It's a poignant story, and there is no better place to feel it than in the plastered, marbled, hand carved rooms of the Delaware District.
To Purchase Tickets: In advance, tickets are $25 ($20 for members of the TR Site or PBN). Tickets can be purchased at the TR Site, 641 Delaware Avenue or by calling 852-3300. Purchase online at www.BuffaloTours.org. If still available, tickets on the day of the tour are $30 and will be sold at the TR Site starting at 9:30.
Lead photo: Knox House
2nd photo: Richmond-Lockwood House, Library mante
3rd photo: Knox House
View image
The Delaware Neighborhood Tour of Homes has sold out!
The residential architecture of Buffalo enjoys national attention, and yet we locals take for granted the beauty and taste that fills our avenues and streets. We bustle down Delaware Avenue in our cars and think we know the houses and their styles. But do we really know much beyond their majestic surfaces, or anything of the joy and suffering they've sheltered for a century or more?
Not unless we stop to savor these houses with their strong personalities and shifting moods. Most of us only imagine entering these homes and leaping into their histories--how they were built, and for whom, and with what values. This Saturday you can more than imagine; you are invited to reflect on eleven beautiful homes from Buffalo's late 19th to early 20th century in The Delaware Neighborhood Tour of Homes. Of the many fine tours of Buffalo architecture this summer, I think this one will leave the finest signature of an exceptional period in Buffalo's domestic architecture. In fact, I invite you personally to come inside the homes of Delaware Avenue and Oakland Place, including the home where I live with the spirits of 116 summers past since this home was built, the foundation dug out and laid by hand. I have tales from three centuries--the 19th, 20th, and 21st--of eccentric or successful or simply famous people in this house, including a former first Lady who spoke from our staircase.
The tour has been carefully crafted by the good people of Preservation Buffalo Niagara and the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site. It takes place Saturday August 21st from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and is now self-guided. You will have a chance to meet some of the homeowners, hear their restoration stories, and relish the wide ranging styles, from an 1870s Italianate on Oakland Place to Grace Millard Knox's masterpiece at 800 Delaware (currently Computer Task Group). The mansions on Delaware now house non-profits, firms, and agencies. But each of them has breathtaking grandeur, including the baronial library of the Lockwood House, which sported one of the finest private libraries in the country (now happily ensconced at UB's Lockwood Library), to the ebullient marble staircase of the Knox house, which has the air of a Medici Palace.
On Oakland Place, the tour acquires a more intimate, evening cocktails feel. These are homes still privately lived in, and yet they retain the formal graciousness of a time when houses of the well-to-do were designed to privilege beauty over all else. There are turns from one room to the next where the eye catches a stunning new pattern of leaded tracery on a window sash. Or where the ceiling height blossoms into an exquisite, almost confectionery crown molding. John Cowper , the man who built City Hall, built his own home on Oakland Place in the 1920s. The living room walls are some four centuries old. Disassembled from Monmouth House in Wales, they are reincarnated in a grand 1920s drawing room. That's re-use with a late gilded age touch.
Yet what makes Buffalo's residential architecture so irresistible is the great spectrum we enjoy, from charming brick workman's cottages, to stout shingled Queen Annes, to the gilded age hauteur of the Knox and Goodyear homes. In this tour, the accent falls on the gilded. But as Buffalo re-imagines its future, and as we prepare to host the National Trust Conference next year, a steady look at this elegant grandeur is maybe the tonic we need as we measure what we've lost and what we've gained in this city garlanded by such beautiful homes yet wounded by tidal changes of fortune. It's a poignant story, and there is no better place to feel it than in the plastered, marbled, hand carved rooms of the Delaware District.
To Purchase Tickets: In advance, tickets are $25 ($20 for members of the TR Site or PBN). Tickets can be purchased at the TR Site, 641 Delaware Avenue or by calling 852-3300. Purchase online at www.BuffaloTours.org. If still available, tickets on the day of the tour are $30 and will be sold at the TR Site starting at 9:30.
Lead photo: Knox House
2nd photo: Richmond-Lockwood House, Library mante
3rd photo: Knox House
![Selling [ Off ] Buffalo](http://www.buffalorising.com/assets_c/2011/02/Central-Art-deco-Buffalo-NY-thumb-145x145-18060.jpg "Selling [ Off ] Buffalo")
Good thing that the Obstructionists saved this mansion and 3 of its neighbors.
There is a huge difference between obstructionists and preservationists. Preservationists tend to be truly focused on, well, preserving the significant and often neglected elements of our built environment. Obstructionists use the preservation card to further a political agenda that is often unrelated to the project at hand. For example, see the H-O grain silo preservation lawsuits and protests, there was absolutely no interest in preserving that building until it was presented as a site for the Casino. Once that plan was on the table, then the preservation card was used in an effort to stop development on the site. The city is no poorer for losing the H-O grain silo, but the preservationist community has lost a fair amount of respect with common citizens as a result of the anti-casino antics.
I think the preservationist in Buffalo lack leadership and credibility. They have done a lot of truly tremendous things, but it only takes a few events like the H-O silos or the recent lawsuit against Bass Pro, filed by several leading preservationists, or the lawsuit over the Gate Circle condominiums that was filed under the guise of preservationists by a group that had a more self-serving agenda.
The preservationists need to focus on proactive preservation of the built environment, instead they are often seen as reactionary, agenda driven, and more interested in politics than in preservation. This is one of the reasons that they are seen as obstructing instead of preserving, and that is unfortunate.
You lump everyone together as it they are one group who meets and decides what project to try and stop. You also act as if their profession is preservation and that they have all the time and resources at their beck and call to save buildings. Preservation of our irreplaceable historic heritage is done only at a grass roots level. There is no time, no money no grand plan to stop projects, Just a concern for continued loss of something that can never be brought back.
These incredibly valuable mansions are only in existence now because of concerned citizens who knew that it would be a massive mistake if they were to be lost. At the time these people were labeled obstructionists and were blamed for hurting the economy. Turns out they were right. The value in obstructing the demolition of these houses has been proven as has the case of preservation again and again and again.
For every lost Bass Pro I can show you 3 successes in preservation. For every lost Bass Pro I can show you 3 major mistakes that unfortunately had no preservationist obstruction - if only we had people willing to speak up when the Kensington was rammed through the city.
I disagree. Buffalo has a tremendous wealth of buildings that have been saved by the large and well funded preservation organizations. They have quite a few successes, but unfortunately they are clouded by some of the high profile lawsuits filed by the leaders of these organizations. When Tim Thielman or Bruce Fischer files a lawsuit to preserve or fight demolition or construction, they are not doing it as private individuals. They are doing it as leaders of Buffalo's preservationist movement and preservation community. This diminishes from the entire mission of the preservationists.
Our preservation movement is well funded but poorly lead. It lacks vision, direction, and credibility, these are all the result of poor leadership. Nearly 2 years after the creation of Preservation Buffalo Niagara, the organization still suffers from the same issues that it was created to correct. Granted, they are doing some good things with walking tours and architectural appreciation; however they still lack leadership to bring the organization to the next step. This is something that is of dire need in Buffalo.
Preserving the mansions along Delaware, significant churches, the Guaranty building, Shea's, Kleinhan's, etc... these are things that the Preservationists should be doing, but should be doing proactively. We know where these buildings are, who owns them, their condition, their tax status, etc, but we fail to act until the 11th hour and usually only after someone has already made plans with the neglected building. Where are the preservationists in the years leading up to destruction? Where are the surveys of historically significant properties that we should focus on? Where is the mobilization of volunteers and community organizations? Answer: No where, because the organization lacks leadership and vision.
BTW, there were preservationist involved in blocking both the Kensington and the Scajacuada; however they lacked credibility and strength. They waited until the last minute to get involved and failed to muster the strength and critical mass needed to fight the project. They almost lost Shea's and Kleinhan's for the same reasons, they almost lost the mansions on Delaware for the same reasons. They will probably lose the Summit building for the same reason.
I strongly disagree. The H-O grain elevators should still be standing. They were structurally sound, no danger to the community & an important part of our heritage. You don't do an end run around the state constitution & grant an illegal monopoly to the Seneca. I strongly support the Gates Circle condos - Olmsted envisioned significant development adjacent to his parks and parkways. Bass Pro was a misguided effort - developers need huge big box retail anchors when they build malls in the suburbs, which can be anyplace, USA. Canal Side is already a destination - the lake, the river, the Erie Canal terminus, the Naval Park, the HSBC arena. Build off of those advantages.
"You don't do an end run around the state constitution & grant an illegal monopoly to the Seneca" -
This is exactly the type of issue that I am talking about, you are using preservation of the H-O silos to fight a political agenda against the Seneca Casinos. Fight the casinos without besmirching the reputation of the preservationists. No one believes that the lawsuit to save the H-O silos was about saving the silos, it was about stopping the Casinos.
"instead they are often seen as reactionary, agenda driven, and more interested in politics than in preservation. "
Agree. Preservationists in Buffalo are often more trouble than asset. It's just like how you're socially wrong if you don't have a ribbon on your car to support the troops because of the way veterans were treated after Vietnam. Because some horrible decisions were made we must jump to the other end of the spectrum and be radical preservationists. My sidewalk is torn apart and falling apart. But it is historic. Must not be replaced.