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New York - Buffalo - Points of Interest (Midtown) (North) THE FRONT, entrance NW. corner of Porter and Busti Aves., is a 50-acre park extending along the water front. THE CASTLE, in the eastern section, is headquarters of the Buffalo Girl Scouts. This building, an excellent example in white limestone of the early castellated phase of the Gothic Revival, was designed and built in 1837 by Colonel James McKay, militarist and schoolmaster. The colonel's son, Steele MacKaye, noted actor-manager, was born here. The landscaped grounds contain several memorials to local regiments that fought in the Civil and SpanishAmerican Wars. The Statue of Oliver Hazard Perry, in the central plaza, was erected in 1915 in honor of the hero of the Battle of Lake Eric ('We have met the enemy and they are ours'), fought in September 1813. The sculptor of the heroic bronze figure was Charles H. Neihaus. The Peace Bridge, north end of The Front, the huge escarpment forming a striking feature of the scene, connects Buffalo and Fort Erie, Ontario. The.completion of the bridge in 1927 marked the culmination of 100 years of uninterrupted peace between the United States and Canada. The OLD BRECKENRIDGE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 44 Breckenridge St., occupied by a plumber's supply shop, was constructed in 1835. It is the oldest building erected for church services now standing in Buffalo. The FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, entrance at Delaware and Delavan Aves., has an area of 267 acres. A map of the plots is in the cemetery office. The Red Jacket Monument, inside Delaware Ave. entrance, is a bronze figure standing on a circular pedestal supported by octagonal stepped bases. An inscription reads: 'The Friend and Protector of his People.' It was erected in 1890 under the direction of the Buffalo Historical Society in memory of the Seneca chief. The Francis Tracy Monument, overlooking Crystal Lake, is a rectangular, stepped, altarlike monument of highly polished and carved brown granite in the Italian Renaissance style. On the west side is a bronze portrait in relief by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Designed by Stanford White, the monument marks the graves of Francis W. Tracy ( 1839-86) and his wife Agnes ( 1845-1903), who as Agnes Ethel was a well-known light comedienne in America and Europe, and as Mrs. Tracy ruled over Buffalo society in the eighties. The Millard Fillmore Monument is a reddish-brown polished granite obelisk on a dark gray granite pedestal and base. It stands in the Fillmore family plot, surrounded by a green-painted iron picket fence. DELAWARE PARK, entrance from Lincoln Parkway, 350 acres, was designed and laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted in 1870. The Albright Art Gallery, entrance on Elmwood Ave., is an impressive white marble building, given in 1905 to the people of Buffalo by John Joseph Albright. The building was designed by Green and Wicks of Buffalo. The central block with a pedimented portico is flanked by colonnaded galleries that lead to pedimented end gallery wings. The structure illustrates the monumental neoclassic manner, here rendered with strict adherence to the ornamental details of the Greek Ionic style. Each of the two side porches has four caryatids by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, directly inspired by those of the Erechtheum in Athens. The Elmwood Avenue façade includes a semicircular colonnade of 13 columns. In the interior, the large central Court of Sculpture is adorned with columns and pilasters; smaller rooms lead beyond to large galleries and, in the northwest corner, to the library, furnished in the modern manner. The permanent collection of the gallery includes pairs of portraits by Gilbert Stuart and Ralph Earle, single paintings by Bellows, Inness, Burchfield, Speicher, and others, and a small collection of French masterpieces. The sculpture collection contains work by Brancusi, Maillol, Mestrovic, Epstein, Bourdelle, Noguchi, Haller, Despiau, Rodin, and Dobson. There are a number of outstanding individual pieces. The gallery conducts more than a score of exhibitions yearly and carries on a number of cultural and educational services for school children and adults. It is managed by the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. The Buffalo Historical Museum, Elmwood Ave. and Nottingham Terrace, in the northwest corner of Delaware Park, is a massive rectangular structure, neoclassic in style. The lake façade has an eight-column Greek Doric portico based on the Parthenon at Athens. Along the Elmwood Avenue façade is a series of three-quarter engaged Greek Doric columns. The building, erected as the New York State Building for the Pan-American Exposition, 1901, was deeded to the Buffalo Historical Society by the State in 1902. The architect, George Cary, also planned the additions built by the City of Buffalo in 1927 and formally opened in 1929. In the portico is Charles H. Neihaus's bronze statue of Lincoln. The bronze doors at the north entrance, with carved figures by R.Hinton Perry representing History and Ethnology, were presented to the society by Andrew Langdon. The exhibits, presenting a visual history of the Niagara Frontier, include groups reproducing historic sites and events; Indian archeology and ethnology; collections of pioneer articles, military equipment, American glass, pottery, and pewter; and a series of costumes illustrating the changing fashions of the Niagara Frontier. The library has about 50,000 volumes, besides important collections of manuscripts and newspapers pertaining to the Niagara Frontier. Lectures are given during the fall and winter. The new Zoological Gardens, at Amherst St. and Parkside Ave., exhibit a wide variety of tropical and native mammals, birds, and reptiles. The new buildings were completed in 1938 by the WPA. BUFFALO STATE TEACHERS' COLLEGE, 1300 Elmwood Ave., built in 1928-30, is a long two-story building of red brick with limestone trim in the post-Colonial style, with simple fenestration and detail. The State Normal School, organized in 1872, became a college by legislative enactment in 1927. It is coeducational and offers a four-year course leading to the degree of B.S. in Education. In addition to training teachers for the elementary grades, the college conducts courses in industrial art and home economics. The BUFFALO STATE HOSPITAL, 400 Forest Ave., maintained by the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene, accommodates more than 2,300 patients. Erected in 1871-81, the group of buildings is an important example of the work of the architect, H.H. Richardson. The central pavilion, four stories high, dominated by a pair of massive, steeply roofed towers, reflects Richardson's love of the Romanesque architecture of southern France. Stepping back, five on each side, and connected by quadrant passageways, are the lower wards, with three projecting pavilions, all in Victorian Gothic style. The go-acre site was landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. The CURTISS AEROPLANE PLANT, NW. corner of Kenmore Ave. and Vulcan St., the largest military aeronautical plant in the country, manufactures and assembles service airplanes for the Army and Navy Air Corps. Planes are also manufactured for foreign powers with permission of the United States Government. The SITE OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY, in the middle of Fordham. Drive between Elmwood Ave. and Lincoln Parkway, is marked by a bronze tablet embedded in a low boulder set in a grass plot. On the afternoon of September 6, 1901, President William McKinley, while visiting the Pan-American Exposition, was receiving the public in the Temple of Music. As he was shaking hands with a line of people, a young man approached with a handkerchief covering the revolver in his hand and fired two shots. The President died eight days later in the Milburn home. The assassin, Leon F. Czolgosz, was electrocuted in Auburn prison the following October. The GOODRICH (AMHERST) HOUSE, 1150 Amherst St., a large white, post-Colonial building of frame construction, is the only existing structure definitely associated with Joseph Ellicott, head of the Holland Purchase survey. He began the house in 1823 on what is now the east side of Main Street just above High Street. Unfinished at his death in 1826, it was completed in 1831 by Colonel Guy H. Goodrich, who occupied it for many years. When the Medical School of the University of Buffalo bought the original site in 1891, the house was purchased by John C. Glenny, who moved it in sections to the present site and renamed it the Amherst House. Although enlarged several times, the building presents an exterior that exemplifies the Roman Palladian phase of late Georgian Colonial architecture, which was introduced during the early Republic by Hoban's more sophisticated design for the White House in Washington. The two-story portico with its six widely-spaced Ionic columns, the crowning balustrade accented by graceful urns, the finely detailed cornice and entablature, and the formal panels beneath each window sill contrast curiously with the early provincial shutters. The entrance door has broad sidelights surmounted by a shell within a semicircular arch. The Palladian window above has been expanded to include two narrow sashes at each side in order to fill the entire space between the tapered pilasters. The MARTIN HOUSE, 125 Jewett Parkway, built in 1904, is an important example of the work of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright, a pupil of Louis Sullivan, evolved at the turn of the century a fresh and personal approach to residential design. The long, low horizontal line of the widely projecting eaves, the grouping of windows, the expansive porches, and the angular masses are all characteristic of Wright's early 'Prairie Architecture.' The house is of brick, with light parapet walls and large supporting piers, which make possible the thin screens of the banked windows. The interior, furnished completely according to Wright's designs, is notable for its facile plan arrangement. There is an intimate affiliation of house and garden. Great stone vases are set on terrace walls; there are extensive flower boxes, and the planting is carefully distributed. A long pergola in the rear leads to the conservatory and stable, the roofs of which are accented with stone birdhouses. The BARTON HOUSE, 118 Summit Ave., in the rear of the Martin House, is also by Wright. Forming an interesting contrast to its more opulent neighbor, this small house exhibits the same motif and manner of composition. ST.MARY'S SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF, 2253 Main St., occupying several three-story red brick buildings connected by covered passageways on a 23 ½ acre site, was formerly the LeCouteulx Deaf and Dumb Institute. Besides lip reading and voice building, the curriculum includes public and parochial school courses, a four-year high school course, training in a number of trades, and courses for teachers of the deaf. Receiving State aid since 1875, the school is open to afflicted children of the State, regardless of race or creed. ST. VINCENT DE PAUL ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH, NE. corner of Main St. and Eastwood Place, is a well composed edifice in the Byzantine style with some Italian Renaissance characteristics; it is built of sandstone with limestone trim. The plan is cruciform, with a polygonal dome and lantern over the crossing. The structure is richly ornamented with Byzantine carvings and figures, rose windows, columns, and freestanding figures at the exterior base of the dome. The interior is rich in conformity with the style. Over the high altar is a baldachin of marble and mosaics. The mural in the apse, by Felix B. Lieftucher, represents the Hand of God radiating gold rays. The church was opened in 1926; the architects were Thomas, Parry, and McMullen, of Pittsburgh. CANISIUS COLLEGE, NE. corner of Main St. and Jefferson Ave., is housed in a long three-story-and-basement building of cream glazed brick with limestone trim erected in 1911. It is designed in the neoclassic style. Over the arched main doorway, in the central pavilion, are four two-story engaged columns with entablature and pediment, surmounted by a Roman dome. This Jesuit college offers undergraduate instruction in the liberal arts and graduate work leading to the Master's degree in chemistry, English, French, and history. It has a fully equipped seismological observatory in a vault under the approach to the main building. The college library has several rare old Bibles. The IRVING AIR CHUTE PLANT, 1671 Jefferson Ave., manufactures parachutes for a large part of the world market. The Caterpillar Club was organized in 1920 by Leslie L. Irving and George Waite of the Irving Air Chute Company. The condition of membership is to have had one's life saved by a parachute jump. The list of members includes individuals from practically every country on the globe. The gentle descent of the caterpillar on its silken thread suggested the name and emblem of the club. The UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO, Main St., entrance opposite Niagara Falls Blvd., occupies a campus of 174 acres. The buildings, set far back from the street at the top of a landscaped slope, are impressive in their gray quietness and neoclassic lines. The University received its charter from the State legislature in 1846, with the power to offer instruction and confer degrees in any branch of professional or academic training; but for 40 years it consisted solely of the Medical School. Beginning in the eighties, the other divisions were added. All coeducational, the various schools confer professional and advanced degrees. For juniors and seniors the College of Arts and Sciences provides, within the usual structure of grouped departments, individual tutorial work culminating in a comprehensive examination in the student's specialized field. The Lockwook Memorial Library (not open to public), facing the center drive, almost square in plan, is built of limestone with a high rusticated base. At the main entrance is a Roman Ionic portico two stories high. The architects were Green and James of Buffalo. Opened in 1933, the building was the gift of Thomas B. Lockwood, who also donated his private collection of about 2,500 rare books and manuscripts, including the first four folio editions of Shakespeare. The older group of buildings is dominated by Edmund Hayes Hall, a three-story stone structure, which was originally the Eric County Almshouse. The central four-story portion with pedimented front and stage tower is of late construction. The building houses administrative offices and classrooms. The Bookstore, at the extreme western end of the campus, is a reproduction of the old Holland Land Office Museum in Batavia.