...And They All Look Just The Same....

Today's blog is centered on the suburbs of the 1950's and 60's.  The post war era that brought home those fighting in World War Two as well as Korea.  As these soldiers were coming home, there came about a need to house these people as well as there soon-to-be families with the onset of the baby boom.  Another idea that arose at the same time was the idea of everybody having their own "piece of the pie", real estate.  It became common place for people to want their own piece of land with their own house and garage for their new car.  There was a large push away from renting in the "over crowded" city to the openness and fresh air of the suburbs.  As the song "Little Boxes" portrays, there was a huge movement to produce an enormous amount of affordable housing for all of these soldiers who were coming home from the wars with pockets full of money earned fighting overseas.  What ended up happening was that a lot of these houses turned out looking the same.  Each neighborhood would have one maybe two different type of house that would be erected on every lot of the suburb so every house would look the same, ticky-tacky.

Traveling along Millersport Highway, you can easily see the ticky-tacky little boxes the song is talking about.  Almost every house on that stretch of road is the same house.  Some have been added on to, like a second floor or a larger garage, but all were built at the same time and look the same.  Cape cod style house with a single car attached garage.  What I feel is kinda of funny is that my house was built in 1936, pre WWII and here is a picture:

Funny thing huh?  The definitive house of the suburbs!!  I didn't really put these two together until well after I bought this house.  Also, this is not on that stretch of Millersport, this is located in Tonawanda yet the house style is the same and it somewhat acts the same for me.  This is my house with my yard in my neighborhood.  And yes, there are a large number of capes on my street as well as in the general area.

I think Hayden's argument is pretty close.  The suburbs gave the impression that they promised certain things and then they delivered, house yard and neighborhood.  Today, however, I think the suburbs do not eliver these three things.  I don't feel that the newer suburbs deliver the neighborhood aspect any more.  Too many of these newer suburbs lose the concept of neighborhood.  The houses are too far apart that people who live next door to each other may find it difficult to actually see each other on a regular basis.  Another influence on this lack of interaction to me is the the idea of lawnservices.  Back in the 50's and 60's in these new suburbs, people took pride in taking care of their own lawns and landscaping.  These days, I can't even count how many landscape businesses are in the phone book.  With these homeowners not going out to take care of their own property, they lose the chance to interact and get to know their own neighbors.  This is why I feel the suburbs are lacking the idea of neighborhood these days.

Crime And Scandal

So, last week, Carl and I went on yet another tour of Buffalo.  This tour was called the "Crime and Scandal" tour, great name however, not so great on results.  It started with great enthusiasm from the two of us, crime and scandal the morning of Halloween, learning about how Buffalo was active in the art of bootlegging during Prohibition.  Unfortunately, I felt it came up a bit short.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that we have been on a number of other tours over the last couple of months.  There's bound to be some repetition of facts and such between some of the tours.

Anyway, there were a number of cool things about the tour.  For example, the Calumet building used to hold the main office of the Ku Klux Klan chapter here in Buffalo, until a list of their members was "found" and released to the public.  Also interesting that this same list is one of the few ever lists of KKK membership let alone one that is still around to be researched.  And it is, it is kept at either the Erie County Historical Society or the Main Library Branch downtown.

I also thought it was pretty cool to learn that Niagara Square was the site of a triple hanging back in the day.  People, apparently, came from far away to see this type of spectacle.  What I didn't understand was that after the hanging, the bodies were taken all the way to Collins for burial.  That's pretty far away in the times of no formaldehyde!!!

All in all, a fairly educational tour.  It also happened to be the largest tour so far, about 50 people!  Unfortunately, I wish there was a bit more talk about the bootlegging and other crimes and a little less about the upcoming elections and building architecture.

Buffalo's Architecture

For this assignment I chose the area of North Buffalo.  I chose this neighborhood because I feel it has a number of the different styles we talked about both in class as well as within this week's reading.  Just from driving around the area, I noticed that there are both fancy hoses and vernacular style doubles only a few blocks away from each other.  For example, the Parkside area is full of gingerbread trim as well as Victorian style houses, also don't forget the amazing Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House shown here:

And here is a nice Victorian from Crescent Ave. not far from the Martin house:

You can see the gingerbread trim along the top of the porch.

Another major style used in the area is the vernacular doubles.  When most people think of North Buffalo they think of a lot of rental property, doubles or flats they are usually called.  I find it interesting that there are so many of these houses in the area, yet close to so many more expensive styles of houses to build.  For example, you can walk from the corner of Hertel and Colvin south on Colvin and see a great number of these doubles, yet if you walk up one of the side streets like Tillinghast, Crescent or even Nottingham Terrace, you can see so many other styles that are not on the main drag like georgian revival, victorian, prairie, bungalo and so many more.

This house is also on Crescent and it shows characteristics of both Prairie style with the somewhat low angle roof as well as Queen Anne style with the asymmetrical front and tower.

Here is one of the famous North Buffalo Double.  These houses have such a distinctive style with the front porch and door to one side, matching door on to the upper porch as well.  Another defining feature I notices was the painting of the houses.  Often times these houses are painted different colors on the top half and bottom half accenting the fact that they are two family homes.  I used to live in a house of this style on Parkside Ave. for a few years, if I can find a picture of it I will add it later.

I found it very interesting to view these houses and the area in a little bit different of a light than I have in the past.  I never really thought about why houses were put where they were.  For example, the saying  involving the term "the wrong side of the tracks" kind of fits for this area.  In North Buffalo, the houses are much bigger and made of more expensive materials on the city side of the train tracks that dissect the area compared to the houses closer to Hertel which are made of cheaper materials as well as mainly multiple family dwellings as opposed to single family.  This would allow the two families to possibly share the mortgage payments and own the house if they weren't just renting from a landlord.

The Grain Elevators

There are a few things I think of when someone mentions Buffalo to me.  The over exaggerated amount of snowfall we receive, chicken wings, the ever unimpressive Bills, the hopeful Sabres and the historic Erie Canal and the Grain Elevators.  These grain elevators were invented in the area in the mid 1800's as a way to move grain up to the top stories of the silos where it was stored along the waterfront in downtown Buffalo.  This is also why they are called elevators, because they elevated the grain to the top of the silos where it was stored until it was moved to either ships going west through the Great Lakes or, more often, to barges taking the Erie Canal towards New York.

These elevators became the primary part of the skyline of Buffalo, however, the ones we are used to seeing are only a small number of them.  Originally they were made out of wood, not concrete, but this also proved to be disastrous.  A side product of moving so much grain on a daily basis also brings so safety issues.  The dust created by some of these grains, when in a high enough concentration in the air, becomes very flammable.  So as these buildings were made of wood with such a high concentration of flammable material, many fires ensued on an almost daily basis.  There were so may of these fires that insurance companies would not insure the elevators.  This lead to concrete and brick.  The concrete was much less flammable and could therefore be insured.  I also mention brick because some of the elevators were even enclosed in a brick building.  Below is a good and only example left here in Buffalo:

Unfortunately for this one, it is in great disrepair and the owner is not putting any money into the upkeep of it.  In fact, every year, they put in a request to the city to tear it down and every year their request is denied due to it being a National Historical Site, Hooray National Historical Society!!!

Now, you may ask yourself "how do they work?"  This is a good question,  although they did greatly help in making the business of the waterfront much more efficient, they did not eliminate the need for men.  These men, mainly the Irish, would shovel the grain off of the ships and onto a vertical conveyor belt that had buckets attached to it.  This conveyor would then lift (elevate) the grain to the top of the silos and fill them from there.  Here a couple of pictures depicting the buckets and conveyor:

This tour was also very informative about a couple of things.  For how can you talk about grain elevators and not about the Erie Canal.  Because of the Canal as well as the Great Lakes, Buffalo became a crossroads for a lot of materials.  These two major waterways were the main highway of the United States before the iron horse and the railway began.  With all of this material flowing through the area, there was great need for storage.  These elevators were then invented and became used for a number of different things, mainly different grains but they were also heavily used for concrete.  In fact there is still a concrete manufacturer on the Buffalo River that uses one of the elevators to store dry concrete.  Also located on the river, right where it enters the inner harbor is a General Mills plant.  It is because of plant that I wish you had smell-o-vision through your computer.  When the wind blows right, you can smell the cereals that they are baking in the plant all along the waterfront of the Buffalo River.  It is no joke that the area smells like Cheerio's what a great smell, truly the smell of home to me.

Traveling Abroad

Today I am going to look at traveling abroad and how different people from around the world view it differently.  To narrow this very broad topic down a bit, I am going to concentrate on Europe and the US and the differences between the two.

To start with, I will discuss how Americans perceive Europe by looking at what we would like to see when we visit.  While browsing a few websites for this assignment, I have noticed that we Americans seem to like England a whole lot.  This may be because of the lack of a language barrier that many other country's have.   A large number of tours that I saw included London, in some form or another, whether it was just a day or two or a longer stay.  Included in these few days, was an almost mandatory trip to St. Paul's Cathedral, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, not one mention of any of Gordon Ramsey's restaurants.  Other major stops include Paris, Rome and Amsterdam for major Western Europe and Prague and Vienna for a more Eastern European tour.  Although I have not been to these cities, upon thinking of this question, I did think I would see most of these cities high on the list for tour cities.

It seems to me that most of these locations have a lot of history both in the city itself as well as art work and other historically significant objects.  London has Big Ben and Parliament, Paris has the Louvre and  Notre Dame, Rome the Colosseum and the Vatican, Prague has more art work as well as buildings and architecture and Vienna also has the art work and architecture.  This leads me to believe that Americans want to see art work, architecture and religious artifacts.  There were other types of tours as well, for example, more of destination packages like to the Alps for skiing, however I felt these were not the tours to be looking at for this assignment.

As for the other side of the pond, what are the Europeans looking for when they visit the US?  When googling tours of USA, I found something a bit interesting that I hadn't noticed looking at the European tours.  A lot of the tours for europeans around the US are much longer than I expected, three weeks and longer.  This was not expected.  Unfortunately it is true that Europeans do get more vacation time than Americans in similar places in their careers.  How I would love to travel Europe on a 65 day tour like I saw going through the US!!!  Anyway, other differences included that when tourists are coming to the US, they seem to be interested in very different things than Americans going to Europe.  Many tours included the National Parks System: Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon to name the major parks, as well as Las Vegas, LA and of course NYC.  Other tours were "coast to coast" tours spanning the entire country, these were mainly the longer tours two weeks and up.

In a nut shell, it seems that visitors from both sides of the pond like to see what they don't have when visiting the other continents.  Europeans who have at home an amazing amount of art work and history are looking for the open road and natural wonders while Americans are looking for history and art work that is not available at home.  As I have been to the MET the MoMa and the Guggenheim in NYC as well as Albright-Knox, I have also been to the Reina Sofia and Prado in Madrid.  There are very many differences between museums from either side of the Atlantic where there is just so much more to see over there.  I'm not trying to knock our system of museums here in the States, it's more just a matter of history and Europe has more of it.

Thought I would close with a picture of Picasso's Guernica.  This is his depiction of the axes bombing Madrid during WWII.  I saw this for myself when I visited Spain some years back and thought it very poignant.  Also, you will notice the large number of people looking at it, how come this doesn't happen in the States?

Here's another little side note.  Back in my blog of the tour of downtown that Carl and I took, I mentioned a building designed by Yamasaki that was a prototype building.  You guys from NYC should have gotten this one, it's the prototype for the World Trade Center.

Black Rock

Last week Carl and I went on a tour of Black Rock.  A lot of unexpected beautiful architecture.  Black Rock originally started as its own city that was vying for the terminus of the Erie Canal.  It was a growing area with a heavily Germanic population.  Now, unfortunately, it seems like it has seen better days.  Some of the houses seem to be falling into neglect while others are doing quite well.  Near the start of the tour, we saw a house, one of the oldest in the area, as well as another house that, over the last ten years, I believe, has been totally rehabbed.  The little house in front of the church to the left has been rehabbed wonderfully while the grey house below is one of the oldest.  At least the left half.  It is a federalist style house which you can tell by the stone blocks used to top the windows instead of the same type of stone used for the rest of the house.  The right half can easily been seen as an addition.

From the beginning, Black Rock has been a working man's town and it still is.  I remember growing up thinking that this wasn't a great neighborhood to wander around in.  Definitely not an area to been seen in a non American car and I grew up driving Nissans and Hondas.  I think I was way off growing up, you know, you're never too old to learn a lesson!

OK, so, working man's town.  You can tell by the architecture that the people building these home and businesses knew what they were doing. From the churches to the fire hall, all had some beautiful art attached to the buildings.  I really liked the eaves of the fire hall as well as the red light on the building.  Not sure the light was original, but I still thought it was cool.  More reasons you could tell it's a working man's town was the fact the most street corners in the area originally had three things on them:   a grocery store, a church and a tavern.  Sounds like a good part of town to me...

The tour also included a tour of one of the former churches of the area that is now a religious center.  Inside were many different styles of the stations of the cross as well as beautiful frescos that have been restored.  Also present there were a few artifacts of a Jewish temple that had closed a couple of years ago.  I thought it interesting that the religious "border" had been crossed and the view of religious artifacts as art had been taken. I'd have to say, my favorite pieces at the center were the art deco stations of the cross with matching crucifix and candle holders.

The tour was a good eye opener for me with respect to the area.  A lot of interesting architecture as well as cool history.  Not  just a good neighborhood for the beer (Flying Bison Brewery calls Black Rock its home) or a way to get to great BBQ (Suzy Q's BBQ shack in Riverside).  Not to mention the largest collection of garden gnomes I have ever seen!!

Skylines

So, for this week's post I'm looking at skylines of cities and comparing them.  The two cities I would like to compare are New York City and Tokyo.  I chose these two cities because I have been lucky enough to have been to both of them as well as I have a few pictures of my own that are readily available instead of searching for pics of other cities that I have been to.

The top picture was taken from the roof top of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC this past June and the lower was taken from the patio of my family's apartment when they were living in Tokyo.  Two very different cities!!!

To start with, NYC was considered a city by the late 1600's and has only grown since then.  It is also the most populous city in the US.  Tokyo, on the other hand, has been an inhabited area since the late 12th century (as a small fishing village to start) but not considered a city until the early 1600's.  Tokyo is now, like NYC, the most populous city in Japan.

Although both cities have been around for a very long time, their skylines are both very different.  One of the first things I noticed while traveling to both places was the architecture.  In NYC, it is very easy to spot a large number of buildings that are at least one hundred years old mixed in with newer buildings as well.  If you look closely at the skyline of Tokyo, the buildings are very different.  Most look somewhat drab and are not much to look at while some are pretty cool, like the zig-zag building in the upper left corner of the pic.  There are two reasons for this.  First, Tokyo had been almost completely leveled by the end of World War Two.  This forced the city to rebuild with fresh new structures to replace everything that had been ruined.  The second reason is that real estate in Japan, and especially in Tokyo, is extremely expensive, so the land is worth a lot more than the building on it.  This leads to landowners building cheap buildings that they plan on using for maybe twenty years, after which they will knock them down and build new ones.

Another major difference I saw between the skylines was the use of signs.  While there are advertisements all over both cities, the use of lighted signs is pretty much kept to Times Square.  In Tokyo, that same type of signs are plastered all over the city!

While both cities are huge, I think that NYC is taller.  There are many skyscrapers in both cities but NYC has so many more that are also taller.  Tokyo does have a large number of skyscrapers, but not like the original home of skyscrapers.

I feel there are many different things that can affect how a city grows, no matter where the city is located.  Some of these things are necessary for the city to grow and others just kind of happen.  Both types make any city unique.

The Imposing Richardson Complex

Last weekend I was able to tour the H.H. Richardson Complex on Forest Ave.  This complex was formerly known as the Buffalo Psych Center.  I learned a lot about it that was really interesting.  For example, the way the building was designed was, from the front, it was a bit imposing with the tall towers right in the front and center.  However, from the back, the building took the look of open arms to cradle and nurture the patients that resided there.  I also found it interesting on how the building was made and added onto over the years.  As you can see from the above picture, the building was made from one kind of stone, Medina Sandstone.  Many buildings from the time period  around the area are also made of the same stone.  However, as you move further away from the Administration Building, you see less sandstone and more brick.  Here's a good example below of the sandstone meeting up with brick at one end of the complex:

Another fact that I found quite interesting was that the original campus for the complex covered all the land that it's on now as well as all of the Buffalo State campus and more.  All of this land allowed the complex to be a self sustaining.  They not only housed patients there, but they also taught the patients trades to rehabilitate and give them a focus of returning to public life away from the complex.  They also had farmed land on the grounds to grow their own food.  Again, the patients (some) were not just allowed, but were expected to take care of field work for the good of the whole complex.  There was also a large green house and other workshops on the grounds.

Something that really caught my attention on the tour was the fact that, in some rooms, you can still see where the chains were attached to the wall that were used to restrain some of the patients.  Yet others were expected to function and take care of gardening or farming or other jobs to help the complex run smoothly throughout the days and months.  From the tainted perception I have made of psych centers in my mind, you know, based on all of those crapy movies over the years, I find it quite forward and humane that these patients were expected to help and not just be chained to walls or be stuck in a padded room wearing the iconic straight jacket for the duration of the day.

Now I do understand that there was a certain percentage of patients that were deemed incurable and what not.  But that also went into the design of the building.  From an aerial view, yo can easily see that the complex is quite long, with the Administration building in the center of it.  To one side, was the female ward while on the other was the male ward.  Also, as you got further away from the center, the building got smaller, as if to house a smaller number of patients.  This was true, as you got further away from the Administration building, the patients housed there were more "incurable".  That is, as your stay at the Center progressed, the doctors would expect you to move more towards the Administration Building until you were healthy enough to walk out the front doors and return to society.

So here's the sad part.  This building and complex served the Buffalo area since it was built in 1872 until about the 1980's.  Since then, not much has been done to the building.  Not even the water lines were shut off.  This proved to be one hell of a downfall for the building.  Because nobody thought to turn the water off before they vacated the building, all sorts of water damage has occurred.  It had gotten so bad that, not only did pipes freeze and break all over the building, but the walls are now falling apart.

In the picture above, you can see not just a big whole in the wall, but also a lot of brickwork missing from above the second story windows.  Both the whole and missing brickwork is due to extensive water damage.  The water would get into the mortar and brick and just rot it away to nothing, literally taking the building apart.

The good news is that there is a lot of talk about rehabbing the complex for some sort of other use.  Either a museum, hotel or offices have been mentioned.  I truly hope something happens soon.  It really is a wonderful building with a great deal of function potential.  Could you imagine staying here if it were made into a hotel??  Talk about nightmares......

Coal Chutes

Carl and I did our presentation on coal chutes this past week.  It turned out to be an interesting project.  While Carl focused on the future of coal chutes, I focused on the past history of them.  Although somewhat difficult to find a lot of written material on the subject, we were lucky enough to find someone who had some insight for us.  Mike was his name, he is the head engineer at the Electric Tower downtown.  He was nice enough to take into the basement of the building as well as outside to show us where the coal entered the building and how it was moved to the furnaces.  With his help we were then able to distinguish between manhole covers and old coal chute covers to many downtown buildings.

Once armed with this new knowledge, Carl and I were able to scout around the city where we found many coal chutes.  Some of these we were able to open and see into the coal bins where they would store the coal.  No coal though.  Most of these underground chutes and bins were devoid of coal, but some did have plenty of debris and even walls that blocked in the bins from the rest of the basement.

All in all, I thought this was a cool project.  To look into the history and future of all of these objects that we see and use daily without really thinking about them.  Since, I have definitely been noticing more coal chute covers as well as manholes and other things like stretcher bonds and flemmish bonds.

Ethnic Landscapes

So this blog is kind of cool.  Ethnic landscapes.  So much of the world we live in is centered around some sort of ethnic landscape.  Here in Buffalo, for about ten years, I lived in North Buffalo.  This is an area that, over the years has been predominately both Italian and Jewish.  Now, I have a bit of a biased opinion of this type of portrayal.  First and foremost, in my mind, saying that an area is "Jewish" does not really say anything in my mind.  Judaism is a religion and not an ethnic background in my mind.  This is because there are so many different backgrounds that Jews come from.  For example, a Jewish neighborhood in New York City will look, act and be very different than a Jewish neighborhood in Warsaw, Poland.

Keeping this in mind, as well as my understanding of the assignment, I will not talk further about this.

I do feel that different backgrounds of people can greatly affect the landscape around these people.  Back to North Buffalo.  I will admit that I do know a large number of Jews that either grew up in North Buffalo or have many different stories of North Buffalo, my parents, aunts and uncles included.  There are many different synagogues, both past and present, that do/have resided there.  Off the top of my head, I can think of three within about a four block radius.  One on Tacoma just west of Colvin, one on Saranac just north of Hertel and one right on Hertel by the corner of Traymore.  Without using Mapquest, I can say that all three of these locations are probably within a 3/4 mile radius.  This is one piece of evidence that, formerly, there were a very large number of Jews living in this area.  Another piece of evidence that I found are mezuzahs.   A mezuzah is a little scroll that Jews would place, historically on every door frame of their house.  It was also a prayer to bless everybody that came through the doors of the house.  While I lived in North Buffalo For almost twelve years, only two of those years was in a house without a mezuzah.  For ten years (all in one apartment) I did notice that someone had taken the time to place mezuzahs on all the door frames of the  apartment.  Although they had been painted over, I knew for sure what they were.  I also have many stories within my family of my aunts and uncles going to the local high school, Bennett High.  This is where my mom's older brother met his soon-to-be wife, my aunt.

Another characteristic of this being a Jewish neighborhood was Mastman's Kosher Deli.  On the corner of Colvin and Hertel stands a builing that still has the Mastman's sign hanging right on the corner.  It looks somewhat older, however I have many fond memories of this deli of m own.  I grew up eating what Mastman's was known for, their kosher corned beef.  What a wonderful stereotype, Jews and their corned beef!!!!  I remember going there as a child with my parents.  It was not a beautiful looking place and I probably didn't think much of it.  It was where we went for corned beef as well as a few other things, usually at least once a year for some sort of holiday.  I think, as I have grown up, maybe it was for the corned beef, but may be it wasn't.  My father grew up with the owner, Jack, they were in Boy Scouts together growing up, and both of them were modest about it.  My father never implied that we would be going there because he know the owner, it was always about the food.  When we would go there they would say hi to each other and take a few minutes to catch up, and then it was down to the food.  I do remember this as the only place that I knew of where they would serve a cup a soup in styrofoam with a plastic spoon where, if you left the spoon in the soup too long, it would melt.  Now that's a HOT cup of soup!!!!  My other very fond memories of the joint revolve around my grandfather.  As he was getting up in years, my mom's father still liked to go to "the old haunts" for a sandwich for lunch.  By now, he was in his eighties,  couldn't see anymore due to macular degeneration and didn't drive.  His best friend from when he was growing up, who couldn't walk and had an assistant, would take my grandfather to Mastman's.  Unfortunately, I didn't meet them there enough.  The servers new them by name and order and were always happy to see the two of them, no matter what.

Often times I can recall driving down Hertel with either my grandparents or my own parents and having them show me where everything used to be, the kosher butcher, the movie theatre, the newsstand, the bowling alley, everything.  It really made me feel very comfortable when I moved into the area, first with my brother who I shared a flat with, and then my soon-to-be wife who I also shared a different flat with.

As for why such a large number of Jews moved into this area over the years, I don't know.  But the evidence is still there.  Like so many ethnicities, the religion of Judaism is and will always be a close knit community.  I'm sure some still think "strength in numbers" or "to be with others in a similar situation as ourselves" is the reason.  Maybe so, I'm not sure, but I do know that, if you look around any city, you can find a number of different neighborhoods with different ethnic backgrounds, offering all sorts of "tastes of home" that others may feel are very weird or different or even gross.  I must say, I welcome the "weirdness"  of others.  I feel I have a lot to learn from others with different backgrounds and welcome the differences with open arms.  Without open arms I feel we can only hurt and alienate ourselves from the rest of the world.  Think about it, we weren't called the melting pot for nothing......

Tour of Downtown

On Friday Morning, Carl and I decided to take the tour of downtown buildings.  It was a beautiful day for the tour, barely a cloud in the sky, perfect for viewing the architecture of the outside of the buildings.  The tour started at the Market Arcade building which was built to resemble a closed air market from Europe, maybe France.  It's about two stories with an open middle where you can see all the way up to the sky light  from the first floor.  The concept of being able to see the sky light from the first floor was present in many of the buildings on the tour.  This was to allow a great amount of natural light to enter the building before electricity was brought into the buildings.

The tour also took us through the Guarantee Building, Ellicott Square, the original main post office that is now ECC City Campus, Gold Dome and the Electric Tower as well as the M&T Tower.  All of these buildings were absolutely amazing.  The amount of detail work put onto all of these buildings is quite amazing, surely not possible by today's standards of wokmanship, let alone the economic feasibility of the details.

To the left is a great example of the detail work we saw.  This is the rotunda floor of the Ellicott Square Building.  The entire floor is made of very small mosaic tiles to create the design.  What craftsmanship!!!  Also, all of the railings for the staircases as well as the supports for the skylight are all wrought iron, amazing.

I also thought is was very cool that Buffalo was used as a prototype building.  The M&T Tower was originally designed as a prototype by Minoru Yamasaki.  Below is a picture of the building, can you figure out what this was a prototype for?  I will leave yo hanging for now and maybe post the answer in the next couple of blogs.  Feel free to comment on your answer.

Of all of the buildings we saw that day, I feel the best was the Electric Tower.  I feel this for two reasons.  One, I am totally into the Art Deco style of the building.  A lot of chrome accents inside as well as stone tiles and more.  For example, a simple letter box.  You can easily see all of the details put into something that you can see on so many street corners.  The second reason I really liked this building was because Carl and I got to speak with the head Engineer who was nice enough to show us the bowels of the building for our coal chute presentation.  I have never been in the basement of such an old building where we could see the original workings of the building.

All in all, I think we had a wonderful experience touring all of these buildings.  We got to learn a bit of history going through them as well as see the history and craftsmanship that went into all of it, from the little spikes put on the building ledges to keep birds away to the detail work in the stained glass of St. Paul's Cathedral.  From the terra cotta tile exterior of the guarantee building to the self-cleaning limestone of the  Electric Tower.  So much to see.......

Looking Up

So, for this installment, I am interested in commercial areas that are made for pedestrians.  I chose the village of Kenmore for two reasons.  One, I live close to the area so there was a bit of convenience, and two, I thought it would be a good area with lots to look at for this assignment.

I will admit right off the bat, I now think there are many other areas that could have been a lot better.  Walking about, I did notice many older buildings.  Some were store fronts, others churches and some public buildings.  I would have to say that the Town of Tonawanda Municipal building was one of the best.

I'm not sure exactly when it was built, I couldn't find the cornerstone, but I'm pretty sure it's close in age to City Hall, which was built in 1929.  Around the top of the building is some very nice scroll work as well as the words "Municipal Building".

I felt most of the buildings, unfortunately over the years, have lost a bit of their original grandeur.  Many of the buildings of the area have been "rehabbed" so original detail work has been lost.

This building above is a good example.  On the first floor where there are two commercial spaces, it appears that the outer facade has been covered with siding, while the upper two floors, probably unused residential living space, has been left with a brick facade as well as a shingled roof.  This roof was most likely slate originally.  Why someone would pay to get rid of an original slate roof is just beyond me.  My own house does have a slate roof and if it didn't, I may have not bought it.  The slate was really part of the charm that hooked me on the house.  It's because of my own love for the stuff that it does really bother me when someone rips it off.  Anyway, there were also a couple of other buildings and things that did catch my eye.  For example, two of the storefronts' signs were attached to the building with a wood picket board.

I thought this was pretty cool and reminded me of an old west town for some reason.  The wood itself was nicely painted but it did have a bit of an aged look to it leading me to believe that it had ben there for some time.

A couple of other buildings caught my eye  as well.  Two of them were single story buildings so not much of a second story to look at but but looked to have original roofs that are terra cotta tiles.

I liked both of these buildings for different reasons. Although they both have a similar roof, they both accentuate the building differently.  For example, on the building above, the roof is on top of the building with the neat concrete urns on top.  Meanwhile, on the building to the right, the roof tiles are actually on the front and side of the building.  On this one as well the owner has taken the time to accent the wood work on the building with a different color, even under the tiled roof line.

I would have to say, that I now like looking up at my surroundings, you never know what your going to see.  Some things could be very cool and interesting while others could be either boring or down right wrong.  Either way, it's all a learning experience as well as one less thing to be taken for granted.

City Hall

So today, Carl and I decided to take the afternoon tour of City Hall.

I have lived in Buffalo and its surrounding areas almost my whole life so I feel I have seen my fare share of architecture throughout the area and I'd have to say, it never gets old!  I've spoken to people all over the world and I am always proud to tell them where I am from.  Most just know of our affinity for snowfall and not much more, so to back up my own words that there is much more to Buffalo than snow, I was very happy to view this building from both the inside and out.

The tour started in the lobby of the building where about ten to twelve of us congregated.  I have to say, I was a little surprised that Carl and I were the only two students on the tour.  Most of the people were from the area but there was also a couple from San Francisco as well as another couple from Europe, I want to say Denmark but I can't remember exactly right now.

The tour was quite informative.  The tour guide, a retired high school teacher from Kenmore East High School was very knowledgeable about not only the building, but also why certain things were designed into the building.  For example, he explained why the building is shaped the way it is.  It is designed in the same fashion as buildings were designed in New York City where as the building gets taller, the sides come in similar to a step pyramid.  This was to allow fresh air to circulate outside the building and down to the ground.  Not much of a problem for where this building is located but still kind of cool to know and look for next time I'm in NYC.

Other things included in the tour was that the building took three years to complete and work started in 1929, right at the beginning of the Great Depression.  Also, we were able to see the Mayor's Office as well as the Council Chambers and the Observation Deck at the top to conclude the tour.  It was a beautiful day for the observation deck.  With the sun out, we could see all the way north to Niagara Falls and the Mist and all the way south to Ralph Wilson Stadium.  Sorry, no good pics of the Ralph, but I do like how you can see the mist of the Falls in this one Below.

I'd have to say, the highlights of the tour for me was the excellent architecture of the building, the amazing frescos and tile work in the lobby, and for me the geographer, being on the observation deck trying to see buffalo as a living map and seeing where everything is from an almost bird's eye view.

Thought these last 2 pics would be a good way to end.  The top is proof Carl didn't try to jump like one person did years ago, the poor guy landed on the flag pole!!! And I like the bottom pic due to the different time periods of Buffalo that are represented.  In the middle are some grain elevators owned by General Mills while in front of them is the HSBC Arena where the Sabres have made their home since the early 1990's and in the back, maybe a brief glimpse of the future with the Steel Winds project's wind turbines.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog about the landscape of Buffalo and the surrounding areas.  Due to the class name, History Of The American Landscape, as well as how the class is going to take us all through the history of cities and how they came to be, I felt "Building Buffalo" would be appropriate.  Please come back soon to see the ideas and images that will soon be filling all of this space.

Thought it might be appropriate to try and load a picture or two here on the maiden voyage.  Hope you enjoy.

This is a photo I took from the breakwall on the Niagara River.  Straight ahead you can see the Frank Lloyd Wright Boathouse as well as the Peace Bridge on the left.
Talk to you all soon.......