A house with the skin of glass and precast concrete reflects the political landscape. Recently completed by the Irish agency FKL Architects, the Precast House stands in the village of Howth, near Dublin.

On this long sloping plot, plunging cliffs and the sea, three volumes emerge, home, garage and detached pool.

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Valleacerón Chapel is located in the municipality of Almadenejos in an autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha, designed by architects Sol Madridejos and Juan Carlos Sancho Osinaga is considered a milestone in avant-garde architecture in Spain.

The chapel is a piece of architecture conceived dramatically, the project is built around a concept of “folding-box” that plays with the compression and tension of concrete to achieve a zero load and eliminate the use of piles within the same, making in one single piece with a unique design.

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The repetitive concrete stubs reveal an upbeat attitude about the city’s seemingly limitless economic growth, though an anticipated building expansion never came to pass. The building is the last, and only remaining, of eight warehouse structures constructed in the Hydraulics by the Keystone Warehouse Company from 1903 to 1917, when this building was completed.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, a chain grocery known in Buffalo as A & P for short, was the long-term lease holder for the 250,000 sq. ft. warehouse, occupying the structure until the chain’s closure in 1975.

The Keystone Warehouse Company did make one final expansion long after the completion of A & P, indicative of changing economic fortunes in the Hydraulics and a regional deemphasis away from the central city. In 1958, the same year as the opening of the East Buffalo section of the Niagara Thruway, the company announced the construction of a new warehousing facility, but not in Buffalo: in Cheektowaga.

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Commentor David Steele, a writer for Buffalo Rising and architect in Chicago, underscores what may be a preservation dilemma in the potential restoration of what was dubbed Larkin Station #6 in the mail-order company’s property inventory – if, as time goes by, such an opportunity emerges. In this unique preservation case, there is the potential to restore both a highly-intact, rare 1960s metal panel facade, or to unveil and restore an even earlier, and more rare, 1929-30 Art Deco facade.

Here’s the problem, according to Steele: a decision would have to be made that would involve either removing a retro 1960s facade that has itself gained historical value over time, or continuing to hide what may be an older, and potentially more interesting facade of Roaring Twenties vintage. The 1960s facade has real value, as Steele points out. It is the sort of pop architecture that is evocative of Route 66 and the highways and biways of America’s forgotten hinterlands, about which many writers and photographers have devoted significant interest in recent years.

The question is a happy one. Inherent in the seeming dilemma is the reality that there may eventually be an opportunity to restore at least one of the facades. That’s a good thing. The former gas station has been vacant for as long as many current high school students have been alive. It’s a miracle it still stands, given the mixed record of preserving interesting buildings in the Hydraulics.

Time will certainly tell. Gas stations, as building types, have yet to gain considerable traction as targets of historical preservation, especially in cities where landmarks of arguably greater significance are still at risk. But as things continue to look up in the Hydraulics, finding a reuse for this unpolished gem of roadside architecture seems not too unlikely a possibility.

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