Buffalo Rising Online

Steel, Thanks for the this wonderful morsel of a view and your thoughtful remarks about urban fabric. I don't know if you've been inside 54 Irving, but it's as charming within as it is from the street. There's a double parlor with double marble fireplaces, 12 foot ceilings, lovely plasterwork and a fine tall pier mirror anchored right between those two arched front windows. Graceful wood valances crown the tops of the windows. It's a very handsome place.

Your argument for the heritage and cohesiveness of our urban fabric is music to my ears, but it's worth noting that people and communitites can have widely divergent interpretations of what that means. Take the recent arguments about the new condo at Gates Circle. You know I respectfully disagree with you about the value of that buidling-- economically, aesthetically, symbolically and otherwise, for the very reasons you mention above. The design for that building does not seem to understand its surroundings, and I doubt that the motives for erecting it have anything to do with enhancing the urban fabric at that site, and everything to do with making the building a smart commodity. Gates Circle has been sadly desecrated much more than nearly perfect Irving Place, but it's an extremely complex site--the intersection of parkway, sculpture, domestic architecture, vehicle traffic, and water. It has been compromised by heterogenity, not enhanced by it, and it's one diamond ring I'd be wary of tossing into the market without vigilant respect for its setting.

But great post--keep them coming!

Thanks for the beautiful picture of our house. It is better inside that outside and the secret garden is an oaisis. We feel honored to be temporary residents of this wonderful home.

I love that house, it reminds me of a farm house around the corner from where I grew up. It still had the full front porch though...

Steel, this is indeed a fine Italianate house - and with the delightful way you have it framed one can almost imagine it as a Charles Burchfield painting. One of the great things about this house is the integrity of its Italian Villa style it presents to the street, despite having substantial additions behind and - as you say - modifications in front.

And you can see to its left the beautiful Stick-style house - actually this whole street is a richness of 19th-century styles like Second Empire, Chateauesque, Queen Anne, and Tudor. But not just the rich diversity of styles, but the textures as well make strolling on this street a rich experience: brickwork, stonework, iron fencing, 19th-century brick and stone pavers here and there, trees and gardens. Many of these streets around Allentown, such as Irving Place, Park Street, Mariner, Derutte Alley, etc. provide an uncommonly rich visual environment for strolling - as found in few other places, anywhere.

Driving thru all sections of Buffalo, most houses that had driveways had a Port Cochere and it would be wonderful if Buffalonians could expand their penchant for restoring the front porches of our urban homes to also restoring the Port Cochere as well.

It is little experiences and views like this that make me love the city. Every time I take a walk around the city you run into little moments like this. My most recent was of the Alleyway off of Porter right in front of that Church near D'Youville. I thought about how the view along the alley with the church at the end must have been done with some intention.

Great shot and article.

I own the house at the end of that alley -- Cobb alley. The view of the church at the other end is pretty sweet.

I own the house at the end of that alley -- Cobb alley. The view of the church at the other end is pretty sweet.

Nice Photo...very nice

I don't think one could be bored in a lifetime of walks around the city. No matter how many times you walk down even the same street, there is something new to discover in the archecture these homes.