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.