City June 6, 2011 4:55 PM

Albright-Knox to Repair Staircase Overlooking Hoyt Lake

Albright-Knox to Repair Staircase Overlooking Hoyt Lake
Buffalo Rising
Buffalo Rising 16

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery will break ground on a major conservation and restoration of its historic staircase and announce a major grant award to execute the project.  Louis Grachos, Director Albright-Knox Art Gallery will be joined by Mark Thomas, Western District Director, New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and Cristina Orsi, Western New York Regional Director, Empire State Development Corporation Wednesday morning at 10 AM to detail the effort.

Since the Gallery's 1905 Albright building was completed more than 100 years ago, its grand staircase has deteriorated and sustained damage to the stair treads, cheek walls and underlying foundation.  Water infiltration is a cause of ongoing corrosion, which further accelerates the rate of deterioration and exacerbates the damage over time, making the conservation work that will be done this summer, essential and urgent.

Entry Image by Frontier.1968

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16 Comments Leave a comment
Chris
June 6, 2011 3:48 PM
Chris

The bridezilla are going to be breathing fire if they can't get their pictures taking there!


:-)

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STEEL
June 6, 2011 4:00 PM
STEEL

I hope the work includes the fountain at the base. It has been in bad shape for decades.

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Lego1981
June 6, 2011 5:20 PM
Lego1981

Is that entrance ever used?

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300miles
June 6, 2011 10:22 PM
300miles

Yes

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replied to Lego1981
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bobbycat
June 6, 2011 8:37 PM
bobbycat

I hope they go back to using the grand entrance as the primary entrance.

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Joe the Planner
June 6, 2011 10:28 PM
Joe the Planner

Tack this onto the work order: repair the original Elmwood Avenue entrance, and put that horrific parking lot underground!

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derby98
June 7, 2011 8:04 AM
derby98

Great idea but who's going to pay for it. Entire frontage on Elmwood should be underground, half for parking other half for addition exhibition space.

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replied to Joe the Planner
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07newbie
June 6, 2011 10:44 PM
07newbie

Car culture rules, and the magnificent entrance is relegated to photo shoots and ambulance parking.

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LouisTully
June 7, 2011 1:44 AM
LouisTully

Perhaps the ambulance parking is in lieu of police actually being a crime deterrent in the area? Too often I drive or walk by here and the staircase isn't even lit up. And the stairs leading down to Hoyt are in terrible need of repair as well.

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sweeper716
June 7, 2011 9:01 AM
sweeper716

They use it as a "staging" area for faster response times to that particular crews coverage zone.

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replied to LouisTully
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irishmedic716
June 7, 2011 2:29 PM
irishmedic716

No Louis, the ambulance parking there is NOT in lieu of the police or a crime deterent in any form. They are simply posted there,(to idle diesel fumes), because the private for profit agency which covers the City of Buffalo does not have enough ambulances to cover calls in area. It is called SSM, or System Status Management. It's a horrendous system that makes for extra wear and tear, increased fuel consumption, frequent idling of diesel engines (state law MANDATES no more than 3 minutes while sitting).
They park there because some genius in an office believes that preposting ambulances at designated intersections rather than fixed EMS stations you can get to the call quicker (a false pretense, just listen to Buffalo Fire and hear how many times you'll hear NO AMBULANCE AVAILABLE). Buffalo needs to reexamine it's EMS Provider seriously but that is a completely different thread.

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replied to LouisTully
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LouisTully
June 7, 2011 3:09 PM
LouisTully

Interesting. I meant that mostly as a jab at the police and a backdoor insult of the BPD for the vandalism of a few weeks ago.

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derby98
June 7, 2011 8:06 AM
derby98

It would be nice if they also incorporated planting beds on each side of staircase.

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DOC
June 7, 2011 11:10 AM
DOC

Where is the major capitol project these days. Last I heard I thought that there wre a team of world-class Art Gallery Architects making plans for a new addition. Is this part of that program?

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grad94
June 7, 2011 7:20 PM
grad94

excuse me but the image you swiped, probably without permission from his estate, is by v. roger lalli, not "Frontier, 1968."

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LouisTully
August 30, 2011 10:59 AM
LouisTully

Ummmmm....

What's the deal with this project? I walked by today and realized that every time I've gone by this in the past three months I haven't seen any progress, not to mention any people working on this. Aside from ruining a summer's worth of wedding photographs, what is happening/not happening with this?

And can anyone offer an explanation for why the stairs are occasionally not lit?

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