Recent Articles
GARDEN WALKS A WORLD APART: BUFFALO, N.Y.
San Francisco Chronicle, August 15, 2007
Imagine a neighborhood garden tour where every house on the block is on the tour.
So many people want to see the gardens - thousands, actually - that parking spaces are in demand and the sidewalks are filled.
Imagine low-income gardeners on the tour who speak not a word of English but who gesture excitedly at the outrageous tropical shrub they smuggled in from Vietnam, and who employ a kind of universal gardener's sign language that says, "Would you like a cutting?" to their well-heeled suburban visitors. Read more...
RESTORING A WRIGHT: BUFFALO RESURRECTS IT'S ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 19, 2006
Imagine a garden tour that charges no fees or ticket prices, runs on a modest budget and still has money left over to give beautification grants to community groups to help further its mission. Oh, and it's so popular that it sells a slick coffee-table book and a DVD documenting its success. Read more...
Against all odds -- crumbling and vanished buildings, a transformed landscape and a daunting price tag to make it all right again -- this lakeside city 14 years ago dared to think the unthinkable and do the undoable. The result? The restoration of the Darwin D. Martin House and the miraculous regeneration of its outbuildings, an expansive Frank Lloyd Wright-designed estate long given up for gone.
Driven by a desire to make their city a must-see stop on the architectural tourism trail, Buffalonians raised $35 million in public and private funds to revive one of Mr. Wright's most important early houses and resurrect its long-demolished pergola, conservatory and carriage house.
An extraordinary act of community will might also be read as an extraordinary act of community atonement for the demolition of one of Mr. Wright's most monumental and progressive buildings, the Larkin Co. Administration Building, knocked down in 1950 and now the site of a parking lot. Read more...
A FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT SHOWPIECE IS BROUGHT BACK TO LIFE IN BUFFALO
Cleveland Plain Dealer, September 4, 2006
If architecture crystallizes a moment in time, the clock is doing strange and wonderful things at Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin D. Martin House. It's running backward and forward at the same time.
Recognized globally as a masterpiece of Wright's pivotal, early 20th-century Prairie Style, the Martin house is undergoing a long, loving and expensive restoration and reconstruction after decades of neglect, decay, demolition and vandalism.
The project is returning the property to its appearance in 1907, soon after Darwin Martin, a wealthy industrialist who rose from poverty to riches, moved into the 15,000-square-foot house with his family. The work completed so far also makes it easy to see how a once-neglected treasure could be appreciated far into the future.
THE CITY OF BUFFALO SHOWS IT HAS THE WRIGHT STUFF
Toronto Globe & Mail, August 4, 2006
Depending on where you look while at the Darwin D. Martin house complex, you get impressions of three completely different things: an archaeological ruin, a 1904 construction site, or a well-preserved historic home.
Rest assured that they're all worth the two-hour drive to Buffalo.
As an architecture fan in Toronto, it's hard not to have heard of the amazing "rescue" of one of Frank Lloyd Wright's most important "Prairie-style" houses by the non-profit Martin House Restoration Corp., since it's the closest Wright building we've got, geographically. As a dedicated heritage preservationist, I find it hard not to love what's happening at the multibuilding site, despite the mild controversy stirred up by purists over the reconstruction of some lost structures. Read more...
BULLISH ON BUFFALO
Newark Star-Ledger, April 22 , 2007
“What other cities have buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan and H. H. Richardson?” they’d asked. (Only one, apparently: Chicago.) In fact, I was easy prey. The city’s faded glory, its gritty history, and its brave aspirations I found irresistible.
Still, though I’d often passed through the city on my way to various elsewheres — Niagara Falls, the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Arts & Crafts mecca of Elbert Hubbard’s Roycrofters in East Aurora — I’d never stopped to explore: a mistake, clearly, as I now know.
BUFFALO'S WARMTH
Orlando Sentinel, September 4, 2005
On a pleasant but seemingly unremarkable residential street, just a few minutes' walk from a large public park, sits the Darwin Martin House.
This house has all the "Wright" stuff: the sleek horizontal lines, the soft Earth tones and the long, narrow, natural bricks. Plus an abundance of windows -- hundreds of them, some adorned with Wright's distinctive, geometrically complex "Tree of Life" pattern.
Built from about 1903 to 1905, for an executive of the Larkin soap company, the house was designed by Wright when he was an up- and-coming architect. In its day, it was a sensation.
"You can imagine, when this was built, what the neighbors must have thought," says Kim Marie McKernan, the docent on duty that afternoon. She adds that those neighbors called it the "modern" house, and it's still easy to see why.
Even today, it looks experimental, abstract, faintly otherworldly. Yes, in a word, modern.
THUNDERING APPLAUSE
Chicago Sun-Times, October 10, 2004
When it comes to theater, architecture and restaurants, Chicagoans feel little reason to leave the city. Oh, we'll give some credit to New York, but it's dirty there and smells bad. However, we were surprised to learn that outside of Manhattan, Buffalo's (N.Y.) theater district possesses one of the largest concentration of performing art centers in the nation. In September, the city held its 23rd annual Curtain Up! to celebrate the opening of the theater season.
Buffalo's theater venues include the Irish Classical Theatre Company, founded by members of Dublin's Abbey Theatre; the Paul Robeson Theatre, which showcases African American playwrights; the Jewish Repertory Theatre, which presents plays with Jewish and multicultural themes, and Shea's Center for Performing Arts, a grand movie palace on whose stage nearly 500 tuxedo-and-gowned supporters dined as part of Curtain Up!'s festivities.
Besides theater, Buffalo boasts an opera company, a symphony, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and two modern dance companies, Pick of the Crop and the Buffalo Contemporary Dance, the latter of which showcased works by modern dance pioneer Anna Sokolow during Curtain Up! weekend.
The city possesses a rich architectural heritage too. Frank Lloyd Wright designed six buildings here including the Darwin D. Martin Complex, a group of interconnected homes in the Prairie Style with art glass windows featuring the Tree of Life design. Louis Sullivan designed the Guaranty Building, an early skyscraper with terra cotta facade, now a National Historic Landmark. Also on the Register of Historic Places is Henry Hobson Richardson's Buffalo Psychiatric Center, a towering Romanesque monument.
36 HOURS | BUFFALO
New York Times, August 13, 2004
Prospering where East Coast canal boats and railroads met Great Lakes cargo, Buffalo was a rich city around 1900, a time when a dynamic group of innovators was transforming American architecture. Wealth and vision came together in major works by Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, H. H. Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Eliel and Eero Saarinen, and more -- arrayed amid blocks of Victorian houses and lavish mansions. When industry collapsed, a shaken and considerably poorer Buffalo slowly realized it had a legacy. Now Buffalonians are working to preserve their architectural collection and are eager to show it off. The time to visit is summer, when Buffalo gets a glorious payback for its snowy winters with some of the best weather in the nation -- three months of mostly sunny, dry days with temperatures in the high 70's and low 80's. Read more...
SHUFFLE NO MORE
Washington Post, July 9, 2003
Buffalo -- yes, Buffalo -- is now walking proud as a hip center of arts and performances.
I left the bus station and headed toward the tall buildings. My first impression of Buffalo: inspiring architecture. Well, except the public library, for which the designers should issue a public apology. For penance, they should have to build three more like the gorgeous art deco City Hall.
A five-minute walk led me to Main Street and the theater district. The light rail runs along Main, and it appears to carry more traffic than the cars.
Sadly, the majority of the retail space on the bottom floors of those grand multistory buildings, mostly home to banks and international investment concerns, is empty. It was 2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and the place was dead. I headed into the only spot that was open, taking a seat at the bar of the Ya Ya Bayou Brewhouse. While I enjoyed my gumbo, a mammoth muffuletta and several pints of locally brewed beer, the restaurant began to fill up.
Students and professors from the University at Buffalo streamed in. To my right, three grant writers discussed strategies for funding a theater project. Behind me, a professor vented his frustrations with plagiarism in the Internet Age. It was a lively crowd. I stepped out on Main Street at about 6 o'clock to see hundreds of people milling around, queuing up for shows at one of the half-dozen or so theaters within those few blocks.
Full of good food and probably a little too much beer, I was smitten with Buffalo.
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