STEEL: November 2011 Archives

I just finished reading this fascinating book about the development of techniques for determining location on the globe in the east west direction, AKA longitude.  This has pretty much nothing to do with Buffalo but I thought I would share anyway.  The concept of longitude and latitude has been around for many centuries as a way of pinpointing a relative location on earth.  Latitude (usually horizontal on a map) is marked by a series of parallel rings around the earth.  They are marked by degrees from the equator and are often referred to as parallels. Longitude is marked

November's addition to the 'Preservation Ready' list of buildings that must be saved is the beautiful and delicately detailed (former) Fairfield Library, located at 1659 Amherst Street at the corner of Fairfield Avenue North Buffalo. The building was designed by William Sydney Wicks (half of the talented and prolific Green and Wicks architecture team which filled so much of Buffalo with great buildings) for the Unitarian Universalist Church. It was built in 1897 and was also occupied later by another congregation before being taken over by the City of Buffalo for a branch Library in the 1920s.

A while back I wrote about an unusual new house being built on Bird Avenue in the Elmwood Village (see post).  That story garnered a predictable set of pro and con views on the radically contemporary design (mostly pro).  Now we can unveil the finished product - inside and out.  The new house was built on the site of a house that had burned 10 or so years ago.  That house was taken down before this house was planned.  The burned house was basically a carbon copy of its still existing

I just finished reading a fascinating biography on Frederick Law Olmsted by Witold Rybcynski. Its long title, "A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century",  describes a key element of Olmsted's work, the control of vistas and the framing of views.  The title also suggests that the book is about America as well as the man.  Olmsted lived and worked at a time of great change and advancement in the United States. It was a time in which our country was maturing and the new industrial age technology was making a tremendous impact on society

At 771 Busti on Buffalo's far West Side sits the next in our series highlighting some of the most important and endangered buildings in Buffalo. It is one of Buffalo's most historic houses and it may not be long for this world.  Built in 1863 (that is Civil War era in case you had not noticed) by Charles Storms, the house is mostly known for its later resident Colonel Samuel Wilkeson who moved into the house in 1885 (already an old house at 22 years). He was grandson of one of the important early founders of Buffalo. That would be Wilkeson as in THE Wilkeson who secured the Erie Canal

The University of Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning has just released the latest book in its eclectic portfolio of over 15  publications on architecture and design.  The new book titled "Minoru Yamasaki, M&T Bank", written and edited by UB professor Brian Carter, is the first in a planned series of books on mid century modern design in Buffalo. 
This is a small book but it is filled with a wonderful assortment of vintage images, architectural detail drawings, and letters.  The photographs are particularly compelling in the way they