An Unguided Architectural Tour of Buffalo, NY

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    Last month, we had occasion to take a day trip to Buffalo. Despite having spent our entire lives in New York City we’d never been to the next most-populous city in the state. The purpose of the trip isn’t important (okay, we were picking up a Siberian cat for the Brownstoner household–Mrs. B is allergic to regular cats) but we found ourselves with a couple of hours to kill in between flights and decided to take a somewhat haphazard walking tour of the formerly great commercial center. With the decline of heavy industry in the area and shipping traffic, the city began a slow but steady decline that resulted in abandoned buildings, widespread unemployment and overall economic malaise. From what we saw, there are encouraging signs of rejuvenation and gentrification (no one’s complaining up there) happening north of the Downtown area. And they’ve certainly got the raw material to work with: The architecture–from the office buildings of Downtown, to family houses to Allentown to the mansions of Millionaire’s Row–was stunning. Herewith follows a random smattering of buildings that grabbed our attention for one reason or another. Apologies for the less-than-stellar photos. All we had with us was an iPhone and it was still pretty early in the morning on a winter day.

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