Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts
Buffalo History Museum Resource Center (former Buffalo Railway Company Forest Avenue Car Barn; Teck Garage), Upper West Side, Buffalo, April 2020
The Buffalo History Museum Resource Center, 459 Forest Avenue at Tremont Avenue, Buffalo, New York, April 2020. Notwithstanding its present-day usage, this squat brick building has a history long connected with the local transportation industry and indeed is among the oldest extant trolley car barns in Buffalo, dating to 1892. It's a fine example of the era's industrial architecture, with a style that is functional and utilitarian yet subtly elegant: note the stepped corbeling atop the recesses in which the upper-story windows are contained, as well as the segmentally arched windows on the right-hand side of the façade (there are more around the corner on the building's west side elevation). The interior, too, is well preserved, containing original trolley tracks on the floor and a crane hoist hanging from the wall near the entrance. The property on which it sits was purchased in 1891 by the Buffalo Railway Company, a newly merged conglomeration of six formerly independently run local streetcar lines which, at the time, was rapidly expanding its network and was badly in need of new storage houses and repair shops for their rolling stock. The Forest Avenue car barn was just one of several that were constructed around the same time at locations throughout Buffalo, and initially served most of the routes in the north and west sides of the city. A devastating January 1918 fire reduced the building to a shell and destroyed 65 streetcars, but it was soon reconstructed by what was now known as the International Railway Company, and even survived the local public transit system's mid-20th-century metamorphosis from electric rail lines to gasoline powered buses, continuing to serve as a garage until its final decommissioning in 1956. Thereafter, it was pressed into use as a privately owned auto collision repair shop, the Teck Garage. It finally came into the hands of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society in 1990 as part of a $5 million renovation and expansion program, and continues today to be used as a storage facility for the museum's vast collection of artifacts related to local history.
Buffalo History Museum Resource Center (former Buffalo Railway Company Forest Avenue Car Barn; Teck Garage), Upper West Side, Buffalo, April 2020
The Buffalo History Museum Resource Center, 459 Forest Avenue at Tremont Avenue, Buffalo, New York, April 2020. Notwithstanding its present-day usage, this squat brick building has a history long connected with the local transportation industry and indeed is among the oldest extant trolley car barns in Buffalo, dating to 1892. It's a fine example of the era's industrial architecture, with a style that is functional and utilitarian yet subtly elegant: note the stepped corbeling atop the recesses in which the upper-story windows are contained, as well as the segmentally arched windows on the right-hand side of the façade (there are more around the corner on the building's west side elevation). The interior, too, is well preserved, containing original trolley tracks on the floor and a crane hoist hanging from the wall near the entrance. The property on which it sits was purchased in 1891 by the Buffalo Railway Company, a newly merged conglomeration of six formerly independently run local streetcar lines which, at the time, was rapidly expanding its network and was badly in need of new storage houses and repair shops for their rolling stock. The Forest Avenue car barn was just one of several that were constructed around the same time at locations throughout Buffalo, and initially served most of the routes in the north and west sides of the city. A devastating January 1918 fire reduced the building to a shell and destroyed 65 streetcars, but it was soon reconstructed by what was now known as the International Railway Company, and even survived the local public transit system's mid-20th-century metamorphosis from electric rail lines to gasoline powered buses, continuing to serve as a garage until its final decommissioning in 1956. Thereafter, it was pressed into use as a privately owned auto collision repair shop, the Teck Garage. It finally came into the hands of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society in 1990 as part of a $5 million renovation and expansion program, and continues today to be used as a storage facility for the museum's vast collection of artifacts related to local history.