| This list, presented in no particular order, was provided by Cynthia VanNess, SAH Conference Local Committee |
Ouroussoff, Nicolai
“Saving Buffalo’s Untold Beauty.”
New York Times, Nov. 14, 2008 | “Buffalo was founded on a rich tradition of architectural experimentation. The architects who worked here were among the first to break with European traditions to create an aesthetic of their own, rooted in American ideals about individualism, commerce and social mobility. And today its grass-roots preservation movement is driven not by Disney-inspired developers but by a vibrant coalition of part-time preservationists, amateur historians and third-generation residents who have made reclaiming the city’s history a deeply personal mission.”
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Kowsky, Frank et al
Buffalo Architecture: A Guide
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ©1981 | Introduction by Reyner Banham, an essay on the Olmsted park system by Charles Beveridge, a reprint of a fine 1940 essay by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, plus contributions by Francis Kowsky and Jack Quinan. If you buy only one Buffalo book, buy this one.
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Goldman, Mark
City on the Edge
Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, ©2007
| It is easy to dismiss Buffalo as the poster child of urban decrepitude and dysfunction. It is also wrong. Mark Goldman resurrects Buffalo's forgotten role on the cutting edge of the literary, artistic, and musical avant-garde. Here is how Buffalo, much to the envy of Boston, peacefully and successfully implemented a court-ordered school desegregation program. Here is how Buffalo, with diminishing resources and little outside help, saved some of America's finest architectural treasures; and how Buffalo integrated one of its most desirable neighborhoods without rancor or white flight.
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Belfer, Lauren
City of Light
New York: Dial Press, ©1999 | Sometimes fiction shows you the heart of city better than anything else. City of Light is set Buffalo in 1901. With its booming industry and newly electrified streets, Buffalo is a model for the century just beginning. Louisa Barrett has made this dazzling city her home. Headmistress of Buffalo's most prestigious school, Louisa is at ease in a world of men, protected by the titans of her city. A shocking murder--followed by another mysterious death--will ignite an explosive chain of events. For in this city of seething intrigue and dazzling progress, a battle rages among politicians, power brokers, and industrialists for control of Niagara.
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Siry, Joseph
Adler and Sullivan's Guaranty Building in Buffalo
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 55, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 6-37 | Siry’s article is the most thorough and authoritative work on this masterpiece. Illustrated with vintage photographs.
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Olenick, Andy and Reisem, Richard Classic Buffalo: A heritage of distinguished architecture
Buffalo, NY: Buffalo Heritage Unlimited, ©1999 | Now out of print but available through used book dealers, Classic Buffalo is a gorgeous color coffee table book that shows off our treasures.
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Kowsky, Francis
The best planned city in the world: Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo park system
Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press; Library of American Landscape History, ©2013
| “Beginning in 1868, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux created a series of parks and parkways for Buffalo, New York, that drew national and international attention. The improvements carefully augmented the city’s original plan with urban design features inspired by Second Empire Paris, including the first system of ‘parkways’ to grace an American city. Displaying the plan at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, Olmsted declared Buffalo ‘the best planned city, as to streets, public places, and grounds, in the United States, if not in the world.’”
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Quinan, Jack Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo venture: from the Larkin Building to Broadacre City: a catalogue of buildings and projects
San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate Communications, Inc., [2012] | “Over a quarter of a century, Frank Lloyd Wright provided the city of Buffalo with a series of remarkable designs. These houses, commercial buildings, and unbuilt projects, devised between 1903 and 1929, link the architect’s early Prairie period to his magnificent reaction to Modernism, exemplified by Fallingwater and the Johnson Wax Building. To convey this story, author Jack Quinan introduces a cast of characters linked by their association with the Larkin Company, the client that first drew Wright to New York State.”
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Buffalo Architecture map
Buffalo, NY: Buffalo History Museum, ©2013
| Using a spreadsheet and BatchGeo.com, the staff of the Research Library at the Buffalo History Museum mapped 1200 buildings in Buffalo, colored coded by architect and showing client, date built, and use.
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Banham, Reyner
Concrete Atlantis
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ©1986 | “In a book that suggests how good Modern was before it went wrong, Reyner Banham details the European discovery of this concrete Atlantis and examines a number of striking architectural instances where aspects of the International Style are anticipated by US industrial buildings.” Concrete Atlantis cemented the significance of Buffalo’s monumental grain elevators.
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