We continue the series on walking Buffalo, from the intrepid couple who walked every day—no matter the weather—in the early years of Covid. They think (without being systematic) they walked every street in Buffalo, and many in other cities and towns, taking some 25,000 photos, shared in this series. While not itineraries, we hope to encourage others to “walk the walk,” to see, observe and appreciate Buffalo—and beyond. William Graebner and Dianne Bennett are also 5 Cent Cine’s film critics, here.
Today’s Photo-Essay: Bad Remodeling
Several years ago, and based on our area walks, I put some photos on Facebook under the rubric “Bad Remodeling.” The response was generally positive—that is, my Facebook Friends agreed with my assessment—but not always. One Friend in particular found the whole idea demeaning, arguing that I had failed to understand that the “bad remodeling” we had noticed wasn’t the result of a deficiency in architectural taste, but of a lack of money, expertise, and the best materials. I understand that criticism, and ask that readers keep it in mind as they wade into this photo-essay. It’s entirely possible that a few, some, or even many of the properties presented here are the way they are (or were) because of limited resources of one kind or another. It makes sense that homeowners—and commercial businesses–do the best they can. Here and there, to offer an additional perspective, we have included anonymous comments from that Facebook experience.
As side-walk observers, what we normally see are the remodeled fronts of houses. Some of these remodelings are additions, others are enclosures (common in Buffalo) of porches that were at one time open. One of the characteristics we’ve noticed is that many of the re-done fronts have been constructed with few, tiny, or non-existent windows.
The white addition with the boarded-up front door is on Hampshire Street. The white, 2-window addition with the pointy top is in Black Rock. Located on the East Side, the 1-window front elicited the Facebook comment, “That’s one house I don’t want to visit.”
The yellow addition on a turreted East Side house is nicely designed, but its design and color don’t quite suit the original structure. In Lackawanna, the owners retained a small porch/entrance (and the paint job is perfect), but decided on an enclosed front with no windows.
While front-remodeling usually errs by not incorporating enough windows…
The Fruit Belt property below, shown here in December 2020, is a classic. Facebook comments included: “I don’t know if it’s art, but I like it.”/”Rustic upper balcony”/”Geez! Watch out.”/(And, from Buffalo artist Bruce Adams) “Yeah, that’s good. Probably fit the budget.” Four years later, after another remodeling, it had been so remarkably transformed that we thought it might not be the same building.
Not quite a classic, but interesting nonetheless, is this yellow house on Grant Street. The remodeling seems to have eliminated the idea of an upper and a lower, resulting in a massive rectangular façade that covers the entire building. Facebook remarks included “And when you do the bad remodel, paint it yellow to really show it off,” and “Oooooh!”
Remodeled “uppers” are less common, but equally problematic. Usually additions, constructed on the surface of an existing porch or roof, they are often too large or seem too large, distorting the dimensions of the structure and even obscuring its basic architectural features. Here are 2 examples. The brick house with the white upper (and dish affixed) is in Niagara Falls (a Facebook Friend responded: “How awful, your eyes must be sore…”).
The Western New York area has long been served by massive corner buildings that once were businesses, boarding houses, or apartment buildings. Many have been torn down, and of those that remain, some have suffered from efforts to make them once again useful. Those noted below are on the West Side, where tear-downs have been less common.
In the desire for additional space, many homeowners have added dormers (from the Latin dormitorium, or sleeping room). An innocent enough project, one would think.
It’s not clear if the dormer of this Tonawanda home was part of the original construction, or a remodel. Whatever the origin, it’s an unusual dormer—not only enormous (and linked visually to the first floor, too), but accomplished with an artistic flair. The dormers (and window-less, dormer-like appendages) on a rather elegant North Buffalo home strike us as a bit strange—though with a creative sensibility.
It looks as if a Tudor-designed home in the Agassiz Circle area was remodeled to include a roof-wide dormer with cat-like “ears.” On Sawyer Avenue, an industrial thoroughfare in Tonawanda, the owners doubled-down and added 2 massive dormers, one on each side of the roof. A modest home near Clinton Street on the East Side was remodeled to include an outsized (given the dimensions of the house) dormer, with 1 small window. Facebook commentary on the Agassiz Circle house: “Geez”/”Yikes!”
The East Side house below was remodeled to include a building-length dormer, with 2 small end windows. Note that the original side of the house (before the addition in the rear) has no windows, nor does the small dormer on the rear addition.
The area’s vernacular architecture is normally not identified with modernism. Even so, a few of the homes we saw have been remodeled with modernist touches. Some of these flourishes work; some don’t; and for others, the jury’s out. One can find the slanted front window on Massachusetts Avenue (from Facebook: “What was the point to be gained”?/”From the interior…it may look nice, but the street view leaves a lot to be desired”). The home with the slanted roof line is not far from Bennett High School.
The unusual inverted V entrances are in a neighborhood east of McCarthy Park. The idea works better on a single home with an inverted V entrance, located on the near East Side—probably East Utica Street. A Facebook Friend reflected on both photos: “To protect from snow, perhaps.”
Kudos for courage to the folks who designed the entrance to 164 (near the Milk-Bone factory, east of Bailey Avenue). Ditto for the sideways West Side façade. A Facebook comment on 164: “But, interesting. Angled walls like in the 30’s. Creative painting. Creative shapes along the upper fence.”
Remodeling can produce changes with a humorous valence. In one case, it appears that the removal of a front porch left a 2nd-floor door that one wouldn’t want to use. In another, on Cayuga Island in the Niagara River, access to a third-floor dormer-like addition appeared to be by ladder only.
We’ve come across a variety of home entrances that are, let’s say, awkward in one way or another. While wandering the planned community of Cedar Grove Heights in Cheektowaga, we found a modest ranch house with a new entrance, reasonably designed and of good materials—that doesn’t quite match the rest of the home. We were “stumped.”
When the near East Side red house with the white box entrance appeared on Facebook in 2021, one Friend said, “They could have painted it red to match the house.” Another wrote, “Shaming poor people in the 3rd poorest city in the country, maybe they just can’t afford to do it right, ever think of that?”
Those who redesigned the front of this home in the Delaware District deserve an award for color. But where’s the door?
We can’t resist presenting this prominently-situated Buddhist add-on, though it’s likely not intended as “remodeling,” and not really an entrance.
Now and then, a remodeling effort, even one that has quite obviously failed, will have inadvertent aesthetic merit—what we call “almost art.”
Commercial buildings, too, can suffer from “bad” remodeling. Sometimes it’s a matter of a home being converted into a business—like the tax offices on Walden Avenue or, farther out on Walden in Lovejoy, another conversion, with modernist ambitions, from a corner home into apartments, that no doubt seemed a “good idea at the time.” The quest for a more contemporary look may have been the source of the green and metal front for a light-industrial building on Howard Street on the East Side. The Howard Street building produced a variety of Facebook responses: “Hard to tell what they were going for here”/Deconstructionist? Maybe the form follows function.”
And sometimes, a once-handsome structure, like this corner building on Grant Street, suffers from too many face-lifts over the years. A distinguished neo-classical structure on Webster Street in North Tonawanda was damaged by a modernist façade that wraps around the first story. “Unfortunate,” said one Friend on Facebook.
And, finally. It’s hard to fathom what the once-popular Clinton Street Ray’s restaurant and bar had in mind with that plus-size white front. (According to the website, Ray’s is now permanently closed.)
Click here to see more “walks and thoughts” by © William Graebner.