A bunch of us were sitting around a table in Ambrosia, our favorite Saturday afternoon breakfast joint, with not much to do. Those were the days. Aimlessly hanging out was easier then.
“We could go downtown and look at the architecture,” someone offered. At that time – and I am ashamed to admit this – I really had no idea why anyone would want to do such a thing.
Architecture was not on my radar. That changed.
A few years later, as part of my work as a curator, I was driving a visiting artist somewhere for his project and he could not shut up about the buildings. The admiring exclamations were coming fast and furious. What delighted this out-of-towner was both the quality and the diversity of Buffalo’s built environment. Each structure had its own beauty, totally different from the one next to it or across the street.
By the time I became editor of Buffalo Spree, I was assigning articles about architecture and preservation as well as writing them myself. I became obsessed with the Buffalo Architecture and History website (buffaloah.org) and regularly checked in with preservation groups. We covered endangered structures, including the Webb Building, the Robinson-Squier House and a row of abandoned or neglected 19th century commercial buildings in Main Street’s 800 block. All of them are rehabbed and occupied now, but at one time, Webb had water pouring through its interior, a wrecking ball had already knocked a hole into Robinson-Squier and 844-48 Main, now known as Graniteworks, was nearly demolished by the City of Buffalo. Each and every one of these and many other structures, most built by well-regarded 19th century architects, had suffered the worst negligent owners could do to them. Each and every one had been pronounced “too far gone to save.”
Needless to say, “You can’t save everything,” was a universal refrain.
Most of the people who live and work in these structures now have no idea they are in…
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