Downtown Buffalo New York Walking Tour

Entries on This Tour

Now home to the City Campus of SUNY Erie, the Old Post Office building is one of Buffalo's most iconic landmarks. Completed in 1901 after four years of construction, it was built with granite and designed in the Gothic style with elements of the Romanesque Revival and Chateaueque styles. The six-story building features a 244-foot tall tower, double-arched windows, and numerous hand-carved stone embellishments including gargoyles, crocketed spires, finials, animal heads (including bisons), and eagles. Inside, the building features terrazzo floors, groin vaults, glazed brick and terra cotta moldings, stained glass windows. The center of the building is an atrium covered by a frosted glass skylight and designed like a Venetian-palazzo. The college acquired the building in 1981.

2. St. Paul's Cathedral of Buffalo, New York

Construction of this Buffalo cathedral began in 1749 and serves a congregation that was established in 1817. The congregation secured its first permanent structure in 1820, and despite the grandeur of this Gothic cathedral, financial woes plagued the church during its first few years until Buffalo experienced a population and economic boom in the mid-nineteenth century. Designed by achitect Richard Upjohn with features inspired by European cathedrals of the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth century, St. Paul's was built in stages owing to the cost of the under taking. The massive tower was completed in 1871. Richard Upjohn was also the architect of New York City’s Trinity Church. A devastating fire in 1888 forced the members to re-build its interior. Robert W. Gibson managed the renovation and the church re-opened early in 1890.

3. Prudential Building (Guaranty Building)

The Guaranty Building, or Prudential Building, opened in 1896 during a time of population, construction, and economic expansion as the city grew to become the nation's eighth largest city. Chicago-school architects such as Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham headed many architectural projects in Buffalo, with the Prudential Building serving as one of Sullivan's last skyscraper projects. Its emphasis on ornamentation -- a staple of Sullivan's work -- included several natural-world features such as flowers and tree branches. Work such as the Prudential Building influenced Frank Lloyd Wright, a Sullivan's protégé as they both developed the Prairie School movement.

4. Old County Hall, Erie County Hall

Constructed between 1871 and 1875 and formally dedicated in 1876, this former city and county government building is now home only to offices of Erie County officials. The building is located on land that proved significant during the War of 1812 and subsequent "burning of Buffalo." The land eventually became a cemetery before the bodies were exhumed to make way for this government building after the Civil War. The structure served both the city and county until 1931 when the city moved to the thirty-two-story Art Deco skyscraper in Niagara Square.

5. Buffalo Gas Light Company Works

Buffalo Gas Light Company Works opened in 1848 on what was then the shores of the Erie Canal and Lake Erie prior to dredging and land reclamation that has changed the shape of the city. The plant turned coal into illuminating light used for lighting city streets, homes, and businesses. The plant's long history speaks to an era when coal and industry went hand-in-hand with commercial development as the nation urbanized and industrialized as it transitioned from the Civil War into the Gilded Age. Though the building was demolished in 2000, the West Genesee Street facade was preserved and the stone structure stands in the foreground against the modern HealthNow New York building, a physical manifestation of the transition from coal to health science as an economic driver.

6. Buffalo City Hall

Planning for this historic civic building occurred during the late 1920s and construction started roughly a month before the 1929 stock market crash. The building is notable for its Art Deco style that grew exceptionally popular during the 1920s. The building opened in 1931, but the official commemoration took place in 1932 during Buffalo's centennial celebration. The interior and exterior are adorned with artwork that details much of the city's history and culture. Visitors can view the city and surrounding areas from its 28th-floor observation deck, located 300 feet above the city.

7. Grover Cleveland Statue

This statue commemorates the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President of the United States, Grover Cleveland (1837-1908). A native of New Jersey, he was mayor of Buffalo and governor of New York before becoming President of the United States, serving from 1885 to 1889 and again from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only U.S. president to serve two non-consecutive terms and the only one to have been married in the White House. On July 1, 1932, in the course of its centennial celebration, the City of Buffalo officially dedicated the new Buffalo City Hall. Additionally, it dedicated a statue of Cleveland at the building’s northeast corner. Designed by New York artist Bryant Baker, the larger-than-life-sized bronze sculpture depicts Cleveland standing, dressed in a suit and overcoat. Looking out onto the horizon, he holds a small stack of papers in his left hand, which rests on a short, draped column. Money from a fund bequeathed to the City by prominent Buffalo attorney James G. Forsyth paid for the statue, the first erected to Cleveland in the United States.

8. Harlow C. Curtiss Building and Curtiss Hotel

Buffalo attorney Harlow Curtiss funded the construction of this building, which was completed in 1913. The era saw continued expansion of Buffalo's economy and downtown district as businesses took advantage of the city's location along the Erie Canal, Great Lakes, and the potential of nearby Niagra Falls as a source of electrical power. Curtiss not only proved to be a prominent attorney and real estate investor in Buffalo, but he was also a close associate of President Grover Cleveland. Following extensive renovation and restoration efforts, the building is now home to the Curtiss Hotel.

9. Calumet Building

The Calumet Building boasts what is perhaps the most striking example of glazed terra cotta in Buffalo. Prominent businessman Robert Keating Root built it in 1906. The building is named after the ornamental terra cotta that depicts "calumus," the Latin word that roughly translates into reeds in English ("calumet" is the Canadian French word for reed). The reed motif is seen throughout the front facade and in parts on the east and west sides of the building as stems, leaves and flowers. The building is also notable for housing a business operated as a "front" by the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1920s. Today the Calumet is owned by a law firm and houses a restaurant on the first floor. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

10. Shea's Buffalo Theatre (Shea's Performing Arts Center)

Built in 1926, Shea's Buffalo Theatre opened at a time when the movie industry was booming and hundreds of movie palaces opened in cities across the U.S. While many of the downtown movie palaces built in the 1920s were elegant, the nearly $2 million Buffalo Theatre was one of the most opulent theaters of the era. The architects, C.W and George L Rapp, also designed New York's Paramount Theatre and Chicago's Oriental Theatre. They designed the Buffalo Theatre to resemble seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European opera houses. Unlike the vast majority of movie palaces that did not survive the twentieth century, Shea's remains a vibrant part of the Buffalo entertainment and social scene.

11. Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA Gallery)

Founded in 1974, the Center for Exploratory and Perceptual Arts (CEPA) is one of the oldest and largest non-profit photography and visual arts organizations of its kind in the country. It offers changing exhibits, numerous education programs for people of all ages, and darkroom and digital labs that are open to the public. It's photography collection includes pictures by Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Patricia Layman Bazelon. The museum also invites photographers from the community to submit their work (using a single-use Kodak camera) to the Visions of Greater Buffalo program; the best pictures are on display on the museum's website. The museum merged with the Big Orbit Gallery in 2013 and has worked with the Just Buffalo Literary Center since 2005 to better promote the arts in Buffalo.

12. School 13

School 13, also known as Boys Vocational High School and Buffalo Alternative High School, opened in 1915 and remained in operation until 2003. For much of its early history, its student body consisted of a plethora of immigrants. The school's demographic makeup spoke to the city's industrial growth, which provided a draw for migrants and immigrants seeking to find jobs in a city that had become the nation's eighth-largest by 1900. Reformers in the early 1920s, including in Buffalo, also sought methods for which to teach and cater to immigrants and offer services to workers --- the poor -- as to avoid any undo issues due to class or labor tensions.

13. Electric Tower (also known as General Electric Tower and Niagara Mohawk Building)

The Electric Building, or General Electric Building, opened in 1912 and has survived as one of Buffalo's most recognizable buildings. The design resembles the Pan-American Exposition’s Tower of Light, which in turn drew its inspiration from the Pharos Lighthouse in Alexandria, which for centuries stood as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.The Electric Tower had one primary purpose: promote the use of electricity. Buffalo served as one of the leading urban centers when it came to electrical use, having harnessed the power of Niagara Falls during the late 1890s, but plenty remained without electricity even as late as 1920.

14. YMCA Central Building

Although sandwiched between the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center and an annex built in 1986, the former YMCA Central Building remains an important architectural and social landmark in Buffalo. It was the location of the third oldest YMCA chapter in North America and the second oldest chapter in the United States. Founded in 1852, the chapter operated until the early 1980s. Erected in 1902, the building is also notable for its English-Flemish Revival architecture. It was built of brick and features a large, ten-story central tower section with dormers and a two-story portico of Tuscan columns. Decorative features include sandstone string courses and quoins. The building was one of the city's tallest when it was built. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

15. H. A. Meldrum Company Building (The Antonio)

When the eight-story H.A. Meldrum Company Building opened in 1909, the building was home to the local company's second store in Buffalo. Herbert Alexander Meldrum opened his first store in 1897, and in so doing, built upon the dry goods and retail legacy led by his father, Alexander, who opened the locally renowned Adam, Meldrum & Anderson (AM&A) in 1867. Meldrum enjoyed exceptional success for decades until troubles forced the sale of the company in 1922 to E.W. Edwards & Sons Co, another retailer who occupied the building until 1952. Today, the building serves as a luxury apartment complex known as The Antonio.

16. Tishman Building (10 Lafayette Square)

Buffalo's Tishman Building was completed in 1959 and the building replaced an 81-year old landmark structure that had been erected in 1876. The building ended a thirty-year drought in downtown construction in Buffalo and set in motion a string of new projects for the city's commercial center. The building was constructed by a company founded in the 19th century by Polish immigrant Julis Tishman who arrived in Buffalo in 1890 and turned the profit of his dry goods store into a multi-generational family-owned real estate and construction firm. The company continues to build new structures including One World Trade Center in New York City. Today, this building is home to office space, apartments, and a hotel.

17. Hotel Lafayette

Louise Bethune, perhaps the first full-time professional female architect in the United States, designed the Hotel Lafayette in 1902. Five years earlier, the city harnessed Niagara Falls as a source of electricity and this hotel became the first in the city to provide electricity to its guests along with hot and cold running water and a telephone in each room. Buffalo's most luxurious hotel until the mid-twentieth century, Hotel Lafayette hotel experienced a substantial decline during after the 1960s as hotels along the interstate eclipsed those near rail stations and downtown business districts. An extensive renovation project after 2010 restored the hotel to its former status as a high-end hotel, a reflection of the returned growth of downtown Buffalo as a destination for travelers and business.

18. Colored Musicians Club of Buffalo

Standing as a monument to both jazz and Black history, the 1934 building has served musicians of color (mainly jazz musicians) since it opened. The 1917 formation of an African American musician union, necessary because all music unions functioned as "Whites-only," provided a place for the Black community to congregate, and for Black musicians to gain employment. Some of the biggest names in Jazz stopped in Buffalo during the club's heyday. The end of legal segregation in 1969 forced unions to merged, but the white-only attitudes remained in place, thus resulting in many musicians of color struggling again to find music-based jobs. Today, the building serves as both a museum and a jazz hall; it's the oldest such place still in operation in the U.S.

19. Michigan Street Baptist Church

Built in 1845, the Michigan Street Baptist Church was a significant stop on the Underground Railroad. It was constructed by African Americans and remains one of the oldest properties in Buffalo continuously owned by African Americans. Because of its proximity to Canada, the church was often the last stop for escaped slaves as they made their way north to freedom, and numerous abolitionists visited the church in the mid-1800s. The congregation eventually moved to another location, and the building has changed hands several times over the years. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

20. Nash House Museum

This local history museum is dedicated to the experiences of African Americans in upstate New York. Reverend Edward Nash was a leading member of Buffalo's African American community and pastor of the Michigan Avenue Baptist Church. As a leading member of the Urban League, NAACP, and the Western New York Association, Nash worked with African American leaders and helped to establish several NAACP chapters throughout the region. The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007 and serves as a local history museum. The museum displays books, manuscripts, microfilm, and other items related to Nash's life.

21. E.M. Hager & Sons Co. Building

Construction on the E.M. Hager & Sons Co. Building occurred in three staged with the main building finished in 1878 followed by additions in 1880 and 1920. The building represents a period for Buffalo where factories and warehouses dotted its urban landscape. Buffalo stood as the eighth largest city in the U.S by 1900 and served as a manufacturing hub. The historic building survives as a symbol of the type of commercial architecture common for the era. The changing nature of the business, focused first on timber-frame construction and then shifting to wood carvings and interior finishing (with wood) speaks to the city's building boom and transition away from wood framing to steel and concrete.

This Tour is a Walking Tour.

Downtown Buffalo New York Walking Tour

Created by Clio Admin on September 24th 2020, 1:51:38 am.

Get a QR Code for this tour

Description

This three-mile walking tour starts at the Old Post Office and St Paul's Cathedral and makes a loop through the heart of Buffalo. The tour works its way west and north with stops at landmark public buildings, early 20th-century theaters, former department stores, historic hotels, and other downtown landmarks. The tour turns back and returns near the starting place, concluding with Michigan Street Baptist Church and the Nash House Museum.

Entries on This Tour

Downtown Buffalo New York Walking Tour

Description

Share