The commercial building at 860 Seneca Street is a stand-out, a real keeper. It was built circa 1890 to house Jacob Duchmann’s Carriage Manufactory, a building use that was unusually prevalent on Seneca Street in the Hydraulics.
Carriage factories (“factory,” by the way, is the linguistic stub of “manufactory” and derives from the Latin factor, meaning doer or maker) dotted Seneca Street for a very good reason. Seneca Street, dubbed the Buffalo & Aurora Road, was a veritable highway for carriage traffic from the farming country of southern Erie County into the city. Farmers destined for wholesale groceries and food markets of Buffalo would find convenient respite in taverns, barns, harness stores, and carriage factory and repair shops along Seneca Street.
The carriages were manufactured in the blacksmith shop located in the storefront at ground level. (Who knows what may hide behind that corrugated iron sheathing!) The second floor was the printing shop and the third floor was used for storage.
The making of carriages did not last beyond the 1910s, when the Ford Model T heralded a new world. But the business quickly adapted. Founded by a blacksmith who worked with cast iron, the factory turned from carriages to cast iron railings and other decorative elements. The newly dubbed Contractor’s Ornamental Steel Company continued to do a thriving business at the site for decades, a fixture in the neighborhood. The business expanded periodically over time to larger workshops on site, and closed as late at 1981, when the property is listed as vacant in city directories for the first time. A collection of tenants filled the space until the late 1990s, when the property ultimately went dark. Highly adaptable, constructed with enduring quality, this historic carriage factory is ideally suited for future economic reuse.
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March 27th, 2010 at 10:02 am
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