For fans of great architecture like me, a collection of signature early skyscrapers and a Frank Lloyd Wright masterwork have long been enough to merit a pilgrimage to Buffalo. The city’s robust industrial past, pioneering landscaping efforts by Frederick Law Olmsted and a rapidly re-energizing downtown are icing on the cake.
Buffalo, N.Y., travel guide: How to get there, where to stay, what to do
Buffalonians know this. Everywhere I went in this lakeside city of 260,000, I encountered an enthusiastic and enterprising cadre of architects, planners, preservationists and developers dedicated to bringing what was once the nation’s eighth-largest city back to life.
One of those folks is Tim Tielman, who, along with a few others, purchased the abandoned Buffalo Central Terminal — a 1929 conglomeration of Guastavino tiles, terrazzo floors and huge arched windows — for $1 and back taxes in 1997. The conservancy they formed has stabilized the building and set it on a still-winding path to revitalization. They’ve created a master plan for the terminal’s eventual development and offer occasional public openings to whet everyone’s appetite.
I met Tielman, director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture and Culture, for a walking tour of downtown’s greatest hits. An opinionated urbanist and preservation purist, he’s an unabashed booster of this fortuitously situated seat of New York’s Erie County.
“Geography is destiny,” he said, before sweeping through a brisk history of the city. Thanks to the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, he explained, Buffalo quickly became a transfer point between the East and the Midwest. A sophisticated network of rail lines made it the nation’s second-biggest transportation center (after Chicago), and the harnessing of the hydraulic power of nearby Niagara Falls ushered in its industrial age. In 1901, the world’s first “electrified city” hosted the Pan-American Exposition.
Tielman pointed out vestiges of that industrial heritage. Seventeen hulking grain elevators stand at various points along the waterfront, while narrow cobblestone streets and modest red-brick wharf buildings sit beneath the looming “skyway” that ribbons through the area.
“Plenty was demolished,” Tielman said, “but a lot survives.”
Such as the 1895 Guaranty Building, designed by Louis Sullivan, the father of the skyscraper. An ornate terra cotta-clad celebration of verticality, it’s a pointed response to the work of rival Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, represented here by the Ellicott Square Building, built around the same time. Although Burnham’s structure is about the same height as the Guaranty, it appears squatter. “That’s because he’s still essentially stacking two- and four-story buildings on top of each other,” Tielman said. “Sullivan was more interested in inventing new forms.”
The spectacular lobbies of both buildings are open to the public. Sullivan’s interior is encrusted with painted iron and elaborate mosaic ceilings, and Burnham’s offers a skylit interior court.
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