Construction Watch: Pierce-Arrow Auto Museum

I suppose its appropriate for a car museum to be set back behind a sea of parking - probably the automobile's most significant urban impact....

This is awesome and i can't wait to see it done, I've been watching progress but I hope they expand the hours once completed. 1, maybe 2 days a week for a few hours doesn't give much opportunity to visit. I got time a few years ago and wanted to go back but have never had the window open to make it.

uh....thumbs down. We have incredible Pierce Arrow buildings still standing....why not put something in there? And, what, exactly, did FLW, and his design for a gas station, have to do with Pierce Arrow? And, why in an atrium?

This concept is pretty tacky (though I do hear the cars are impressive). Fauxstologia at its best.

The Transportation Museum is pretty cool.

It's good to see anything happening in this part of town that will attract more people. As it stands now, there's not much going on down in that area, and it could really use more people. 40,000 expected visitors per year works out to about 770 per week. So that's about 100 to 200 per day, depending on how many days per week it will be open after the addition is completed? I guess that's a start.

The museum is one of Buffalo's hidden jewels. The expansion will allow them to exhibit even more of their incredible inventory. Thanks for the update.

Thank you for the investment in Buffalo, but i have to agree with Travelrr, why not the Pierce Arrow building? closer to the "museum district", and an actual nostalgic place unto itself.

Significant architecture has to have a certain drive by quality, i.e. I have given a thousand arch based tours of this town for family, friends and colleagues and a FLLW designed gas station inside another building, as if a relic, doesn't quite make the grade. At least the mausoleum and boat house are "real" buildings. This might as well be a reception desk for the cars.

All that being said, again thank you for the investment. You have some wicked awesome whipps inside that edifice...

Doesn't it make sense to have it enclosed? I mean if it really is a FLW design than obviously it would be leaking all the time, weather badly, too drafty in the winter and too hot in the summer, cost a fortune to maintain, etc. Why not build upon FLW flaws.

Hopefully Travelrr won't be run over as crosses the street. That would be fitting and funny.

Travelrrr is right. This project is tacky. Even if FLW designed a gas station for the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cherry Street, does it really need to be built now? And why celebrate architecture by stripping it of its function and housing it in a mediocre building. It also seems to me that if there was never a time when Pierce Arrow cars used FLW gas stations in Buffalo then we are getting into fake history territory. Either this is a serious museum about history and education or its just fanboyism.

Love the idea for the museum, don't like the big parking lot.

Also, this might be a private collection, but the museum is heavily subsidized with State money.

It's great that this museum is bringing people downtown....but, another renaissance is happening at the Pierce-Arrow Factory Building on Elmwood and Great Arrow. With plenty of parking, this facility is the home to two of Buffalo's best theatre companies, THE ALT and SUBVERSIVE THEATRES as well as numerous artist studios. Within the next few months, more tenants are scheduled to move in this vast and exciting space. It's a shame that this museum wasn't located in this building.

It sounds like the Pierce Arrow building is in full use right now. How would the museum get it? Boot everybody out? Was it even for sale? Just seems like people are randomly telling the museum moved to a building that isn't even available.

As I recall, this is all or mostly TAX money. Please tell us if I'm wrong. Private museums, collecting money from us all, then charging admission? This is good? Or tell us otherwise.

This area is a sea of parking already..expect ppl to pay to park across the street because it needs to be built to the curb; do you? Be happy its being built in Buffalo and not at the Galleria Mall.

I agree with above..this is another thing to offer tourists and locals alike in WNY. Just one more reason to head downtown. If anything I would like to see attractions like this "sprinkled" all over the downtown area vs. clustered on the waterfront.

I love it. Despite all the typical "Wah wah it has a parking lot" and "Wah Wah why is it in a new building instead of a run down 18th century pig slaugterhouse" comments, I think the museum provides a modern facility displaying two very important pieces of Buffalo's history.

"This area is not, and will never be a walkable urban environment."

why are you so confident in this?

and parking lots do not equal open space.