News
Buffalo’s architectural history
Brian Carter, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, gave an audience of more than 100 people a virtual tour of Buffalo architecture yesterday.
In his UBThisSummer lecture, titled “Design Matters,” Carter discussed the city's rich architectural history, taking the crowd from inside the hallways of the School of Architecture and Planning to Kleinhans Music Hall.
The dean opened his talk by telling listeners that design matters. The look and layout of a city, in particular, can improve people's quality of life, he said.
Buffalo's Olmsted park system, for instance, "captures ideas about green cities," Carter said, highlighting the importance of the environment, exercise, and health and wellness. The system is, in a way, "democratic" because it extends throughout the entire city, not just in wealthier neighborhoods, he said.
"If you think about the city, there are very, very good examples in Buffalo about design," Carter said. "Design is everywhere."
Buildings of architectural significance in the area range from the terra-cotta-covered Guaranty Building to grain elevators by the river.
Buffalo also has some lesser-known treasures, some of them within the School of Architecture and Planning, which is housed in Hayes Hall, South Campus.
Carter talked about the student-led redesign of public spaces within the school, including a library. Drawing inspiration from bar codes used to tag books, the students designed and built a wooden library circulation desk whose front facade consisted of a row of wooden panels of varying widths. The young architects drew from the same concept to create tall bookshelves divided vertically by wooden panels.
While Hayes Hall's interior includes architectural gems, the building is perhaps better known by its exterior, with its white clock tower. A prominent part of the Main Street landscape, Hayes was constructed circa 1865, serving as a poor house, lunatic asylum and hospital before the university acquired the structure in the late 1920s, Carter said. Besides housing academic facilities, the building stands as a backdrop for outdoor events, such as UB On the Green.
Words that former UB Chancellor Samuel Capen spoke in 1928 on the day of the building's dedication emphasized the idea that design matters in urban planning, highlighting the notion that Hayes Hall belonged to both the university and Buffalo.
"From its nature and its central position, this building is destined to be the focus of the life of the university for many years, perhaps for many generations," Capen said, according to Carter. "It will be pre-eminently the visual symbol of the university, both to the members of the institution and the community at large."
One reason that architecture has flourished in Buffalo is that historically, many residents understood the importance of design, Carter said.
The Kleinhans Music Hall, created by father-and-son architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen, was built during the Great Depression, Carter said.
Of Darwin D. Martin, the Buffalonian who commissioned the famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright on projects including the Darwin D. Martin House Complex, Carter said, "If we think about Darwin Martin, here was a man who hired an architect from Chicago who's a renegade, really, a fairly wild character, as many of you know, and supported him. …We often think about the significance of architecture, but we don't always think about the significance of clients. Architects don't have buildings to design if clients don't support them."
"We're very, very fortunate," Carter said, "to be in a city that really, in many ways, is a celebration of design."
Reader Comments