The headquarters of the Department of Health Basque ruled was designed by architectural firm coll Barreu. The structure was completed in 2008, is one of the most outstanding examples of progressive architecture in Europe. Read the rest of this entry »

The former Larkin Building U is being cleaned out by Rogers Foam Corp., the automotive parts manufacturer that bought out the now defunct Par Foam Products, Inc., a competitor. Par Foam Products, which occupied the historic factory complex at 237 Van Rensselaer Street for more than two decades, was closed late last year and its assets are now reportedly being shipped to other plants or discarded.

Larkin Building U is now getting closer by the day to a clean slate, a cleared, highly adaptable structure poised for a new economic purpose. While the future of the building is unclear, its potential becomes even more vividly apparent as the building is vacated. Read the rest of this entry »

Today’s urban scene of the week (er, scene of the month?) brings us to 567 Exchange Street, an alluringly spare, rustic loft building at the banks of Buffalo’s most historic and longest-enduring rail line, the Buffalo & Attica, first built in 1843 and later subsumed into the New York Central rail empire that connected the city to New York, Chicago, and the vast reaches of the continent beyond.

The four-story structure was not constructed at this site in 1900 for no reason. The Buffalo Lounge Co., for which the building was erected, chose this precise location because of the geography of the Hydraulics at the intersection of several rail lines, including the Erie and New York Central. The Buffalo Lounge Co. was directly linked to both lines via a rail bed that once existed behind the building. Read the rest of this entry »

This just in! The January emergency demolition of the Sacred Heart School at 198 Emslie Street not only broke hearts, it also broke the bank.

The emergency demolition of the landmark building reportedly cost taxpayers a cool $125,000. Economic return on the investment? Zero. While few doubt the necessity of the demolition in light of its collapsing brick facade and the imminent threat the building posed to human safety, fewer still believe the school’s “demolition by neglect” was inevitable. Read the rest of this entry »

“The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday and tomorrow. In that lies hope.” – Frank Lloyd Wright, 1958.

The Larkin Power House is an endlessly fascinating structure, and forms the background for this “urban scene of the week,” this blog’s periodical commentary on particular vantage points in the Hydraulics. The view is found at the nexus of yesterday and tomorrow, communicating history and possibility.

The scene, taken a few dozen feet from the New York Central tracks south of Swan Street, is archetypal of Buffalo’s Read the rest of this entry »