New York - Buffalo - Points of Interest (Midtown)
TRINITY EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 371 Delaware Ave. opposite Trinity Pl., erected in 1884-6, is a brownstone edifice designed in the Victorian Gothic style. The exterior of the adjoining CHRIST CHAPEL is also Victorian Gothic; the interior, rebuilt and furnished in 1913, is in excellent modern English Gothic, with windows by John La Farge. The architect was W.H.Archer of Buffalo.
The BUFFALO CLUB, 388 Delaware Ave., a three-story mansion with mansard roof, was built as a residence by S.V.R.Watson in 1870. The organization, founded in 1866 with Millard Fillmore as president and William G. Fargo as one of the directors, purchased the place in 1887. While President William McKinley lay on his deathbed, September 6-14, 1901, the U.S.Cabinet met in the directors' room of the club.
The GROSVENOR LIBRARY, 383 Franklin St., a rambling red brick building covered with vines, has a circular tower at the corner. Here is housed one of the largest reference libraries in the country—about 300,000 volumes, including outstanding collections in medicine, chemistry, genealogy, local history, art, and music. The library was named for Seth Grosvenor, pioneer business man, who died in 1857, leaving $40,000 to found a reference library.
The BUFFALO COURIER-EXPRESS BUILDING, NE. corner of Main and Goodell Sts., erected in 1930, is a rectangular, five-story building of buff terra cotta with a polished brown granite base. Over the main entrance of this modern building are 16 black metal grilles depicting printer's marks. The architects were Monks and Johnson, Boston, Mass. In the first-floor lobby is a large mural by Charles Bigelow and Ernest Davenport, symbolizing the development of the newspaper in Buffalo. From the observation gallery off the first-floor mezzanine overlooking the pressroom, visitors watch the first edition being run off.
When Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) and his bride came to Buffalo in 1870, they found the MARK TWAIN HOUSE, 472 Delaware Ave., waiting for them as a wedding gift from the bride's father. They set up housekeeping in this place, a two-story brick structure with a mansard roof, and Twain began his work as co-editor of the Buffalo Express and as contributor of humorous articles to the Galaxy, a magazine. Their stay here was not a happy one. Twain's father-in-law died within the year; one of his wife's school friends died while a guest in this house. Shortly after, the first Clemens baby was born prematurely, resulting in a long illness for mother and child. Finding it impossible to continue his humorous writings in a house that had been the scene of so much sorrow, Mark Twain moved with his family to Elmira, after less than two years of residence in Buffalo.
The NEW YORK STATE INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF MALIGNANT DISEASES, 113 High St., is a three-story buff and red brick building. Founded in 1896, the institution cares for cancer sufferers and studies the cause, cure, and prevention of malignant diseases. The equipment includes four grams of radium for 'packs,' and nearly two grams, in the form of salts, for needles and other applicators.
TEMPLE BETH ZION, Reform, 599 Delaware Ave., belonging to a congregation organized in 1847, was dedicated in 1890. Designed in the Byzantine-Romanesque style, the temple is square in plan, with towers at the front corners and a lunette treatment above the main entrance. A large, copper-covered dome over the auditorium rests on an octagonal drum and rises to a small lantern cupola. The temple was designed by Edward A. Kent of Buffalo, the school and residence at the rear and side by Dietel and Wade.
The WILCOX HOUSE, 641 Delaware Ave., is a gray-painted brick building with a pedimented portico and six Roman Doric columns, characteristic of the Classical Revival style. In this house, on September 14, 1901, upon the death of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt took the oath as President of the United States.
The SATURN CLUB, 977 Delaware Ave., of red brick and limestone trim, is in the style of an English Tudor manor house, with mullioned windows, leaded panes, full-story bay windows, and a fine Tudor doorway. The cornerstone was laid in 1921 and the building opened in 1922; the architect was Duane Lyman of Buffalo. Above the larger of the two fireplaces in the main lounge is inscribed the club's motto: 'Where the women cease from troubling and the wicked are at rest.'
ST.JOSEPH'S CATHEDRAL, NE. corner of Delaware Ave. and W.Utica St., dedicated in 1914, is the cathedral church of the Buffalo diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. Italian Gothic in style, it was built in 1912-14 after plans by Aristides Leonori of Rome, Italy. The exterior is faced with a veneer of Vermont and Italian marble. The two towers on the western façade originally had lanterns and lofty spires, which had to be taken down because of disintegration of the marble. Unusually broad proportions, necessitated by modern congregational seating, gives the interior a spaciousness not often found in medieval cathedrals.
In the MILBURN HOUSE, 1168 Delaware Ave., a brick structure of two-and-one-half stories, President William McKinley died on September 14, 1901, eight days after he was shot by Leon F. Czolgosz.
The BUFFALO MASONIC CONSISTORY, 1180 Delaware Ave., dedicated in 1925, has four connecting units; Harold J. Cook was the architect. The three front units of graystone are designed in the Tudor Gothic style, with gables, steep green slate roofs, chimney pots, and mullioned windows. The main entrance is designed in the early English Renaissance style. The interior of the lobby, of marble in rich. black and gold, is embellished with Greek Doric columns. A marble staircase leads to the ballroom, Renaissance in treatment, with wall panels depicting the history of the dance. The auditorium is designed in the neoclassic style; the ceiling is elaborately illuminated to produce stellar effects. A series of upper side wall treatments in the architectural orders, with paintings and ornaments, symbolize the principal Masonic steps to the thirty-third degree.

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