For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
- John Greenleaf Whittier, “Maud Muller,” 1856
The Wagner & Nauland Block, a composition of two Italianate commercial structures at 742-748 Seneca Street, was demolished in the late 1990s. Was it necessary?

This photograph, taken at about 1979 by Black Rock activist Scott Glasgow, shows the block in its final iteration as Mindy’s Home Service, a used appliance store that occupied the site into the mid-1990s. The heritage structures, which would have finely complemented the streetscape of any city, were reportedly in good repair at the time of their demolition, only a few years before the 2002 rehabilitation of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse, 500 feet away, shattered misconceptions about the potential marriage of preservation and economic development in Buffalo’s “near downtown.” Read the rest of this entry »

The Larkin District represents the “skyline” of the Hydraulics. The image of Larkin factory and warehouse buildings towering over the neighborhood is stirring, particularly from rare roof perspectives. The following images, taken recently while peeking through the roof portals (sorry, no public access!) of Larkin Building N at 701 Seneca, communicate a post-industrial agglomeration of prodigious scale, signifying the old and new Buffalo simultaneously.

The reemergence of the Larkin District as an important center of activity is an Read the rest of this entry »