Western New York Architecture Deep Cuts
Bank of America Building, Downtown Buffalo, January 2021
The Bank of America Building at 12 Fountain Plaza, as viewed from the corner of Pearl and West Huron Streets in Buffalo, New York in January 2021. A work of the locally-based architectural firm of CannonDesign, this is one of downtown Buffalo's relatively few examples of Late Modern architecture, in which all the tendencies of the midcentury International Style - the emphasis on straight lines, sharp corners, smooth surfaces, simplicity, and lack of ornamentation - are pushed to their logical extremes. Note the almost mechanical regularity in the pattern of recessed ribbons of blue tinted windows alternating with the concrete exterior wall itself. The Norstar Center, as it was originally known, was the first purpose-built component of Fountain Plaza, a development that's historically notable as the last urban renewal megaproject in Buffalo to have consumed entire blocks of previously existing buildings. Bounded by Maine, Chippewa, Pearl, and what was once a westerly continuation of Genesee Street, the five-acre, four-building complex is anchored by, and was an outgrowth of, the Genesee Building, the roots of whose redevelopment trace back to the mid-1970s, a time when city officials aimed to capitalize on demand generated from the soon-to-be-completed Buffalo Niagara Convention Center by seeking proposals for a pair of new downtown hotels. At that time, San Francisco based architect Clement Chan had already hatched preliminary plans for what would eventually become the Hilton (later Adams Marc) hotel at the foot of Church Street, and by 1979, downtown watchers had zeroed in on the Genesee Building - whose owner, Leon Lawrence Sidell, had recently entered bankruptcy proceedings - as a likely site for the second. Originally slated for demolition along with the neighboring Victor's Furniture Store, local preservationists instead notched an early win by convincing developers to retain the 16-story, copper-roofed E. B. Green masterwork and incorporate it into the complex. As further details regarding financing and operator concessions were hammered out, attention turned to the northerly block, which was initially proposed as the site of a large office building as well as retail space, the latter envisioned as spillover development from the nearby Theater District on whose revitalization and expansion city officials were hard at work. The buildings on the site (mostly comprising late 19th-century low-rise commercial storefronts similar to those found on the nearby 500 Block of Main, but also including the architecturally significant, Art Moderne-style W. T. Grant Building) were razed in 1981, with shovels in the ground that summer for the construction of what was announced to be a new headquarters for Liberty National Bank, a formerly locally-owned institution that had become a subsidiary of the Albany-based Norstar Bancorp by the time of the building's completion in November 1982. The facility remains today in use as office space for Bank of America, Liberty Norstar's successor after a long chain of corporate mergers and acquisitions. The Genesee Building, for its part, reopened in February 1984 as the Hyatt Regency Buffalo, while the northernmost portion of the complex remained vacant until the completion in 1991 of the twin towers of 40 and 50 Fountain Plaza, the former of which can be seen here in the background at far left.
Bank of America Building, Downtown Buffalo, January 2021
The Bank of America Building at 12 Fountain Plaza, as viewed from the corner of Pearl and West Huron Streets in Buffalo, New York in January 2021. A work of the locally-based architectural firm of CannonDesign, this is one of downtown Buffalo's relatively few examples of Late Modern architecture, in which all the tendencies of the midcentury International Style - the emphasis on straight lines, sharp corners, smooth surfaces, simplicity, and lack of ornamentation - are pushed to their logical extremes. Note the almost mechanical regularity in the pattern of recessed ribbons of blue tinted windows alternating with the concrete exterior wall itself. The Norstar Center, as it was originally known, was the first purpose-built component of Fountain Plaza, a development that's historically notable as the last urban renewal megaproject in Buffalo to have consumed entire blocks of previously existing buildings. Bounded by Maine, Chippewa, Pearl, and what was once a westerly continuation of Genesee Street, the five-acre, four-building complex is anchored by, and was an outgrowth of, the Genesee Building, the roots of whose redevelopment trace back to the mid-1970s, a time when city officials aimed to capitalize on demand generated from the soon-to-be-completed Buffalo Niagara Convention Center by seeking proposals for a pair of new downtown hotels. At that time, San Francisco based architect Clement Chan had already hatched preliminary plans for what would eventually become the Hilton (later Adams Marc) hotel at the foot of Church Street, and by 1979, downtown watchers had zeroed in on the Genesee Building - whose owner, Leon Lawrence Sidell, had recently entered bankruptcy proceedings - as a likely site for the second. Originally slated for demolition along with the neighboring Victor's Furniture Store, local preservationists instead notched an early win by convincing developers to retain the 16-story, copper-roofed E. B. Green masterwork and incorporate it into the complex. As further details regarding financing and operator concessions were hammered out, attention turned to the northerly block, which was initially proposed as the site of a large office building as well as retail space, the latter envisioned as spillover development from the nearby Theater District on whose revitalization and expansion city officials were hard at work. The buildings on the site (mostly comprising late 19th-century low-rise commercial storefronts similar to those found on the nearby 500 Block of Main, but also including the architecturally significant, Art Moderne-style W. T. Grant Building) were razed in 1981, with shovels in the ground that summer for the construction of what was announced to be a new headquarters for Liberty National Bank, a formerly locally-owned institution that had become a subsidiary of the Albany-based Norstar Bancorp by the time of the building's completion in November 1982. The facility remains today in use as office space for Bank of America, Liberty Norstar's successor after a long chain of corporate mergers and acquisitions. The Genesee Building, for its part, reopened in February 1984 as the Hyatt Regency Buffalo, while the northernmost portion of the complex remained vacant until the completion in 1991 of the twin towers of 40 and 50 Fountain Plaza, the former of which can be seen here in the background at far left.