This
beautiful roof peak sculpture is on a house at 100 Oxford in the Oxford Square neighborhood,
named after the street that runs north/south down its center. This neighborhood
is a generally triangular shaped area of several blocks between Linwood and
Main and Ferry and Delavan. It was recently featured in a slideshow by
Elena. (Damn her! She beat me to the punch.)
This is a very beautiful
section of the city and should be every bit as popular as nearby Elmwood
Village, but once fell prey to poverty, real and perceived crime, and racist
attitudes. If you want an Elmwood Village style house at a fraction of
the cost, this is the place for you. It is very much worth focusing more
attention on this very valuable few blocks, so I will do another slide show in
a few months.
In Elena’s
slide show this magnificent work of art slid by very quickly, but I though it
worth a closer look. The city is filled with many extraordinary pediment
decorations, but this might just be the best of them all. It is very
large and extremely dense with detail. Usually these are actually cast
from plaster rather than carved from wood. That makes them extremely
delicate and susceptible to neglect and Buffalo’s harsh winters. I will have a
sadder pediment story in the near future. This one is slightly worn but is almost completely intact in spite
of its extremely delicate composition and less than perfect maintenance.
[Editor’s note: Ouch.]