Buffalo’s Great Planners and Designers
While Buffalo is indebted to Frank Lloyd Wright and the magnificent work he built here, there were many other planners and designers who had a part in making Buffalo the aesthetically-pleasing “Queen City of the Great Lakes” by the beginning of the twentieth century.
All of them had in common tremendous talent, drive and ambition, with commanding, dynamic personalities. Above all, they had vision.
Joseph Ellicott realized the potential of Western New York and laid the groundwork for its prosperity for the next 100 years.
Frederick Law Olmsted understood the importance of what we would call today “quality of life” and, through the creation of parks, parkways and circles, sought to create a refuge within an urban environment.
Henry Hobson Richardson created a style that would become known as “Richardsonian Romanesque,” celebrating the power of buildings to project authority and the prosperity of its people.
Louis Sullivan gave us the skyscraper by understanding the potential of elevators, structural steel and other new building materials. His vision changed the cityscapes of America and the world.
Edward B. Green Sr. left a lasting imprint on Buffalo with lavish homes, industrial and commercial commissions, churches, hospitals and a myriad of other designs. His genius and vision are breathtaking.
What is amazing is that Buffalo was able to attract these and other such talented people to design its buildings and shape its environment.
 Edward B. Green (1855-1950)
Buffalo's Most Prolific Architect
Other architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and H.H. Richardson are better known and more acclaimed, but none can match the prolific imprint Edward B. Green left on the city of Buffalo.
During Green’s 72-year career he designed more than 370 major structures from Maine to Indiana, more than two-thirds of them in Buffalo, with about 160 of those in Buffalo surviving. His style seems to have been to design whatever his clients wanted. Thus, it is not surprising that he was often first among local architects to receive commissions for the design of the city’s significant civic, commercial, educational, religious and residential buildings.
Born in Utica, he was graduated from Cornell University with a degree in architecture. With an MIT graduate, William S. Wicks, he opened a partnership in Auburn, then moved their office to Buffalo in 1881.
The Early Years
 One of his earliest creations was the First Presbyterian Church (1891). The Richardson Romanesque building of Medina sandstone with its tall single tower creates a dramatic focal point on the Symphony Circle end of Richmond Avenue, complementing the twin towers of H. H. Richardson's State Hospital at the other.
By 1892, the firm began designing nearly every other house on Delaware Avenue, then Buffalo’s most exclusive street, in a district now known as Millionaires’ Row. Green designed ten grand homes in a variety of styles, mostly Renaissance revival. They included the Charles W. Goodyear House at 888 Delaware, the George B. Matthews House at 830 Delaware, the George V. Foreman House at 824 Delaware, and the Stephen Clement House at 786 Delaware.
Green and Wicks designed the city’s only historic covered shopping arcade, the Market Arcade Building (1892), with entrances on Main and Washington Streets, generally regarded as the forerunner of the contemporary suburban mall. Green designed the M.H. Birge and Sons Co. building for the renowned wallpaper firm in 1895 and, in 1896, a townhouse for its president Henry Birge, at 477 Delaware Ave. In 1900, he designed the casino and boathouse for Delaware Park Lake, as well as the cast bronze lamps throughout the park. Downtown, Green’s gold-domed Buffalo Savings Bank (1901) attested to the city’s growing economic strength.¹
 Pan-American Board of Architects, Green designed three buildings for the 1901 Exposition. His principal client over the years was Buffalo industrialist John J. Albright. After Green had completed several commissions during the 1890s, Albright donated $350,000 in 1900 for the construction of a new art gallery and hired Green’s firm to begin design of what became the Albright Art Gallery.
Although the building was not be completed in time for the Exposition, the gallery’s location on a knoll at the western end of Delaware Park Lake inspired Green to produce one of his most scholarly designs and create the most academically-correct Greek temple his firm was capable of producing. He persuaded Albright that the design would not be complete without caryatids supporting the north and south porch roofs. Sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, they were installed in 1933. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Green was made a member of the gallery’s board of directors, a capacity in which he would serve for 46 years.
E.B. Green and Sons.
After Wicks’s retirement in 1917, E.B.’s son, Edward Jr. joined his father’s office and the firm of Edward B. Green and Sons was founded. The firm’s commercial buildings include the Genesee Building (1923), now renovated and incorporated into the downtown Hyatt Regency Hotel, and the Marine National Bank Building on Main Street. Green’s use of granite, stone brick and limestone gave structures an air of permanence, yet he tempered the feeling of massiveness with careful detailing. He designed the Buffalo Athletic Club in a Colonial Revival style, but many of the rooms have a Moorish quality, with graceful arches in the entry hall, lounge and grill room.
Mayfair Lane
Green designed the townhouse development on North Street known as Mayfair Lane (1928), with houses set in an idealized English medieval atmosphere. It was planned to accommodate a streamlined lifestyle within walking distance of the downtown business section without sacrificing modern conveniences such as underground garages.
 University at Buffalo
Green and Sons had won the commission to create a master plan for the University of Buffalo on Main Street and to design several key buildings. Edward Jr. was the architect in charge of designing Crosby Hall, Norton Hall and Lockwood Memorial Library when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1933. From 1933-36, Green Sr. worked on the project until R. Maxwell James joined the firm, which became Green and James.
For approximately ten years, the firm worked on plans for the buildings, choosing English Renaissance style to enclose the campus and to create a sense of place and identity.
They used Lockwood Library as the focal point, with other buildings placed geometrically according to function, establishing a hierarchy of functions through geometrical relationships. Their intent was to create major open space surrounded by academic buildings. Auxiliary areas would accommodate student housing, athletic facilities and service buildings. In addition to the Lockwood Library, the Green firm designed 16 buildings on the U.B. campus.
Later Work and Legacy
Green’s work after 1933 included the Tonawanda City Hall, a plain structure in pale stone dress with an art deco trim, possibly his only modern design. Green and James designed Memorial Auditorium in downtown Buffalo, a building typical of that era’s Works Progress Administration publicly-funded architecture. By 1940, E. B. Green was working as a consultant for Green and James, with most commissions on industrial or public projects.
Green’s career contributions were best summarized by Buffalo historian Austin Fox who wrote, “Edward B. Green and his partners left an indelible imprint on Buffalo. It is hard to visualize the city without Green’s buildings. They help form the profile of the city and give it some of its personality and its refinement.”²
Green retired in 1945 and died in 1950 at age 95. He is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.
NOTES AND SOURCES:
¹To appreciate the range and variety of the work of Green and Associates, see the list of surviving E.B. Green buildings is here.
²Austin M. Fox, “The Greening of Buffalo: How Architect E.B. Green Shaped the Profile of the City.”
Chuck LaChiusa, “Buffalo as an Architectural Museum: Edward Brodhead Green.”
Photos of Green, First Presbyterian Church and Crosby Hall by Chuck LaChiusa
Photos of the Buffalo Athletic Club may be found here.
University of Buffalo photos are here. Also see Reyner Banham et al., Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 313-14, and Andy Olenick and Richard O. Reisem, Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture (Buffalo: Canisius College Press, 2000), pp. 136-143.
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 Joseph Ellicott (1760-1826)
Buffalo traces its beginnings to Joseph Ellicott, who learned surveying from his older brother, Andrew, surveyor-general of the United States, while assisting on the layout for the new nation’s capital.
He was hired as a surveyor for the Holland Land Co., a consortium of six Dutch banking houses that had purchased 3.5 million acres of Western New York land, including the present site of Buffalo. Beginning in 1797, Ellicott carried out a three-year survey of Holland lands, then became the resident agent for the company, selling land on a commission. In 1800 he moved to the village that was to become Buffalo.
Ellicott laid out a radiating plan for streets that would last for more than 100 years before being altered. He incorporated some of Washington D.C.’s street designs for those of Buffalo, running avenues at acute angles, like spokes radiating from a hub, which became Niagara Square. He was later instrumental in plotting the location of roads and bridges that began to fill in the gaps between settlements in Western New York, facilitating the growth of commerce and settlement.
As seller and land agent, Ellicott believed the way to populate the area was through liberal credit terms. The land would be cleared and populated, thus increasing land values. He offered generous terms and, when buyers could not make payments, he often extended the terms and sometimes forgave interest if they had made improvements. To help stimulate growth in the area he offered some selected parcels free upon condition that the buyer would establish a mill or an inn.
One of the early promoters of the Erie Canal, he served as canal consultant for the state legislature. When the canal reached Rochester, there were those who wanted to stop its westward progression. Ellicott used the formidable political power he had developed over the years to push the canal from Rochester to Buffalo, thereby insuring the city’s prosperity for the next 100 years.
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 Frederick Law Olmsted’s Buffalo Parks
In a day and a half in August 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted, the greatest landscape architect and parks designer of the nineteenth century, conceptualized the Buffalo parks system that bears his name. Invited to determine a park site for the city, he toured three proposed locations on a Monday, analyzed soil samples and finished his survey by midday Tuesday, and presented his ideas to a meeting of two hundred civic leaders that evening.
The largest parcel was a 350 acre site four miles north of the city (Delaware Park). The second, two miles from Niagara Square, was on a dramatic bluff overlooking the Niagara River (Front Park). The third was located on high ground with a view of the city and Lake Erie (Humboldt Park, now Martin Luther King Jr. Park).
Rather than choosing just one of the sites for the major Buffalo park, Olmsted proposed that the city acquire all three parcels for what would become the nation’s first interconnected system of parkways and tree-lined avenues linking the parks with one another and downtown.
“In Buffalo, Olmsted showed how the burgeoning American industrial city could be made livable,” biographer Witold Rybczynski wrote, adding:
"His highly original plan was a complex and refined network of parks, parkways, avenues and public spaces that represented a degree of sophistication in city planning previously unknown in the United States. He distributed parks throughout the city to make recreation space more accessible."¹
 Delaware Park
The centerpiece of Olmsted’s plan was Delaware Park, with meadows, lake and forest that would provide residents a respite from the hustle and bustle of the city. His partner, architect Calvert Vaux, designed the park buildings and other structures, including a boathouse, a gazebo overlooking the lake, an office and quarters for the park superintendent, and a stone viaduct over Delaware Avenue.
Their design did not envision the intrusion of public buildings. The construction of the New York State building (now the Buffalo and Erie Historical Society) for the Pan-American Exposition at the turn of the twentieth century and the Albright (now Albright-Knox) Art Gallery ran counter to Olmsted’s concept of a park space for recreation and communing with nature without distractions.
A zoo was later established near the superintendent’s building, replacing the flock of sheep that had once grazed in the meadow. In the 1960s, an expressway was cut through the park, negatively affecting the ambiance Olmsted sought to create. Despite the changes from the original plan, Delaware Park, with features such as the rose garden, pathways for strollers and joggers, Shakespeare in the Park performances in summer and ice skating on the lake in winter, remains the oasis Olmsted envisioned.
South Park and the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens
The 155-acre South Park, designed in 1894 as an arboretum, with more than 2,300 types of trees, shrubs and plant life and room for a large conservatory building, is now home to the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens. More than 200 species of trees remain in the park.
 A national historic site, education center and tourist destination, the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens opened to the public in 1900. Designed by Frederick A. Lord and William Addison Burnham, premier designers of Victorian glass houses, the Gardens serve as the gateway into the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed South Park. The conservatory was part of Olmsted’s original plan for South Park and was designed to offer a collection of exotic plants from around the world. Olmsted intended South Park to function as an arboretum for arboreal plants tolerant of Buffalo’s climate.
The conservatory’s unique tri-domed glass, wood and steel design was based upon the famous Crystal Palace and Royal Botanical Gardens glasshouses at Kew, England. When built (1897-1899) it was the third largest public greenhouse in the United States and ninth largest in the world. The unique tri-domed facility is one of only three remaining Lord & Burnham conservatories in the United States and the only conservatory in the eastern United States incorporated into a park designed by Olmsted.
Today, the Botanical Gardens are undergoing a $20 million restoration and expansion which started in 2001 and is scheduled to be completed by 2012.
This comprehensive expansion and renovation project will meld the Gardens’ rich history and architecture with bold innovative concepts and designs such as the Buffalo Meridian project.
Buffalo is located on the 79th longitude/meridian. The Buffalo Meridian concept will take visitors on a walking tour through the Gardens and around the globe visiting various locales and plant collections found along the Buffalo Meridian. These exhibits will alternate between gallery gardens, and habitat immersion exhibits and
address varying climatic conditions: tropical; subtropical; Mediterranean; temperate and desert. They will also include a myriad of plants, animals and human communities that share this longitudinal connection.
 Front Park
The 37-acre Front Park was located on a bluff overlooking the Niagara River and Lake Erie. Attracted by the panorama of lake and river, the park drew 5,000 visitors on weekends and more than 1,000 on weekdays when it was first opened in the 1870s. Olmsted wrote that one could observe “a river effect such as can be seen, I believe, nowhere else—a certain quivering of the surface and a rare tone of color, the result of the crowding upward of the lake waters as they enter the deep portal of the Niagara.”²
The park, once considered as a site for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, was not only designed as a grand setting for public ceremonies but for everyday activities as well. Its features included a carriage concourse, a promenade, the Front House pavilion, bandstand and amphitheater. A ball field, and waterfront playgrounds and boating facilities were added later.
While it is now dwarfed by the I-190 Thruway spur to the west and bisected by the access roads to the Peace Bridge, there are plans to make the park a welcoming international gateway between the U.S and Canada. An unsightly brick park building that obscured the view of the water was demolished two years ago, thus restoring the scenic overlook, and a number of restoration and rehabilitation projects are slated for Front Park in the coming months and years. More than $2 million has been allocated for park improvements, including a substantial pathway restoration project and full reconstruction of the terrace overlook plaza.
 Martin Luther King Jr. Park
Originally known as “The Parade,” this park was designed as a military drill field and parade ground. Built on high ground east of the city, with a view of Buffalo and the lake beyond, it was a popular weekend destination for the German immigrant families who lived nearby. The park had a grove of play equipment for children and featured a two story refectory (dining hall) designed by Vaux.
In 1896, Olmsted’s son, John, redesigned the park and its name was changed to Humboldt Park. The playground was replaced with a picnic grove and a series of water features, including a wading pool that drew thousands of visitors. In the 1920s, a casino was added and a greenhouse replaced the refectory. The Science Museum was built in 1929.
The park was connected to Delaware Park via the 200-foot wide Humboldt Parkway, similar to Bidwell Parkway on the west side, until 1960 when the parkway was torn up and rows of stately trees were cut down to make way for the Kensington Expressway.
Reflecting the city’s changing demographics, the park was renamed in 1977 to Martin Luther King Jr. Park. Like Front Park, efforts are being made to restore some of the park’s original features. New spray pads brought water recreation back to the center of the basin in Phase 1 of the wading pool rehabilitation.
Other Parks and Projects
Olmsted’s firm continued to design public grounds for the rapidly expanding city until 1915. Amazingly, the majority of Olmsted’s designs in Buffalo, which are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, are substantially intact.
All were connected by seven broad “parkways” which excluded commercial traffic and sought to provide a park experience for the entire city. There were also seven picturesque traffic circles.
Cazenovia Park, connected to South Park by the Red Jacket and McKinley Parkways, was built in 1893. The 186-acre park has one of the more mature stands of trees in the city. Cazenovia Creek, which flows through, adds to the park’s beauty.
 Designed in 1898, the 22-acre Riverside Park was the last park the Olmsted firm designed in Buffalo. Originally, park visitors could walk across a footbridge over the Erie Canal. In 1912, 12 acres were added to the south end of the park. Today, while Riverside is a vibrant neighborhood park, only remnants of Olmsted’s plan for the park remain.
In addition to his work in Buffalo, Olmsted’s “Special Report of New York State Survey on the Preservation of the Scenery of Niagara Falls”(1880) played an important role in convincing New York legislators to purchase and hold Niagara Falls as a public reserve.
NOTES AND SOURCES:
See pictures of the parks at the Web site of the Buffalo Oldmsted Parks Conservancy. Stanton M. Broderick, “Omsted in Buffalo,” also has pictures of the early parks.
¹Witold Rybczynski, A Clearing in the Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Scribner, 1999), p. 289. Olmsted’s Buffalo visit is described in pp. 285-89.
²Frederick Law Olmsted, “A Healthy Change in the Tone of the Human Heart,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 32 (1886), p. 963, quoted in Francis R. Kowsky, “Municipal Parks and City Planning: Frederick Law Olmsted’s Buffalo Park and Parkway System,” from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, March 1987. Kowsky’s article provides extensive detail about the creation of the Olmsted parks system. Also see Charles Beveridge, “Buffalo’s Park and Parkway System,” in Reyner Banham et al, Buffalo Architecture: A Guide (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 15-23.
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 Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886)
The fact that Henry Hobson Richardson, considered by many to be the nineteenth century’s greatest American architect, left an imprint on Buffalo speaks volumes about the wealth, prestige and influence of the city by the late nineteenth century. Richardson’s greatest local work, the Buffalo Psychiatric Center, was just one aspect of his remarkable ability.
 His Buffalo commissions resulted from what we today call “networking.” A local lawyer, William Dorsheimer, had invited Frederick Law Olmsted to come to Buffalo to inspect a site for a large public park. Olmsted suggested that Richardson, then a young architect who had studied at the Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris, design a house for Dorsheimer. Built in the French style, it stands at 434 Delaware Avenue.
The Dorsheimer commission led to a productive friendship. In 1877, while lieutenant-governor of New York, Dorsheimer was able to have Richardson, together with Olmsted and Leopold Eidlitz, named to complete the capitol at Albany.
The Dorsheimer residence was one of several projects in Buffalo with which Richardson became involved. In addition to the William Gratwick house, built from 1886-1888, a few blocks north of the Dorsheimer property, at the corner of Delaware and Summer, Richardson prepared designs for a number of works that were never constructed. These included a house for a Dorsheimer associate, Asher P. Nichols (1869-70); churches for both Christ and Trinity Episcopal parishes (1869 and circa 1871); a Civil War soldiers’ and sailors’ memorial arch (1874) proposed for Niagara Square (ground was broken but the necessary funds were never raised); and a library for the Young Men’s Association (1884).
Richardson’s architectural style, “Richardsonian Romanesque,” was adopted by other architects to construct private houses, railway stations, libraries, churches and armories. It was characterized by strength, simplicity and power. Locally, the Connecticut Street Armory and Lafayette Presbyterian Church show Richardson’s influence in their arches, towers and the use of Medina red sandstone.
SOURCES:
Chuck LaChiusa, “Buffalo as an Architectural Museum: Henry Hobson Richardson,” and “William Dorsheimer House” .
Also see Reyner Banham et al., Buffalo Architecture: A Guide, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 33, 132,-33, 166-68; and Andy Olenick and Richard O. Reisem, Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture (Buffalo: Canisius College Press, 2000), pp. 114-15.
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