Today, the McKinley Monument in the center of Niagara Square is dwarfed by the skyscraper surrounding it – but that wasn’t the case in 1914, just a few years after it was built.
Standing on the sidewalk on Delaware Avenue, the photographer caught a bit of the Castle Inn to the left. Once the home of Millard Fillmore, the mansion-turned-hotel was torn down to make way for the Statler.
The turret belongs to the YWCA building designed by Edward Austin Kent and built in 1888. It was torn down in 1927, and the former federal courthouse built on the spot is now Buffalo Fire and Police headquarters.
Those three taller buildings off in the distance are still there, even if no longer visible when standing in the same spot.
Furthest to the left is the Guaranty Building – the terra cotta masterpiece designed by Louis Sullivan and built in 1896. Next is the neo-Gothic New York Telephone building, which opened at the corner of Church and Franklin in 1913.
People are also reading…
Partially blocked by the tree was the building known at the time as Buffalo City Hall, now known as Old County Hall. Before construction began on the Maine granite structure in 1871, that Franklin-Church-Delaware-Eagle block was home to the Franklin Square Cemetery. The remains of the War of 1812 soldiers buried there were moved to Forest Lawn.
By the time Buffalo moved government operations into the current art deco city hall building in 1931, the view from this spot looked dramatically different, with all the changes previously discussed and the replacement of many of the 1840s mansions on the other side of Niagara Square with the BAC building, designed by E.B. Green and opened in 1923.
In the Google Streets view of the same spot today, only the McKinley Monument and slivers of the Guaranty and New York Telephone buildings – in front of the looming Seneca One tower – offer a point of reference to the 108-year-old photo.