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Buffalo - Part 3
More than just Buffalo Chicken Wings
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Dominick discovers all of the cultural and culinary diversity that Buffalo has to offer.
Sunday
Today, we took a tour of the architectural and artistic highlights of the city, or so it was called. As I said, it's a city of extremes as shown by our first stop, Our Lady of Victory Basilica. Our Lady of Victory is the basilica, which was built according to the dream and desire of Fr. Baker. Fr. Baker sent postcards collecting quarters from Catholics around the country in hopes of raising money for this project, and the end result is awe-inspiring. The Basilica rivals many of those seen in Europe in the amount of work and artistry put into it. In fact, one of the goals of Fr. Baker was to have some of the best artisans working on this project, and he recruited talent from around the world to get involved.
The church boasts literally thousands of statues of angels, a painted ceiling or two, dozens of statues of saints, and life-sized depictions of the Stations of the Cross. It's one of the only churches in the United States I've seen with this much artwork and done this beautifully.
From Our Lady of Victory, we headed off to brunch at the Roycroft Inn. The Inn stands on the same location where the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community was founded in 1895, by Elbert Hubbard. Based on the Medieval Guild system, Hubbard created a self-contained community, which supported hundreds of craftspeople. The antiques and works created back then are priceless and are sought by collectors around the world.
The entire Inn is decorated with the furniture created during the time period, which if you've not seen any of it, is is large, bulky, but sturdy. For example, unbeknownst to most guests, the front desk, is still functioning after over 100 years.
Back to the brunch, the brunch was a hardy, country breakfast sure to fill you up, but the atmosphere was really what made it for me. The kind of place where you're forced to relax and think about the good ol' days.
After that, we went back in the car and headed north towards Buffalo to see the Pierce-Arrow Museum. What is the Pierce-Arrow? Don't ask the curator, Jim Sandoro, because he's insane. With a calm mellow voice, he doesn't show his insanity, but if you say the words "Pierce and Arrow" in a sentence next to him, he'll try getting it into his museum. His undying passion for anything with the words Pierce and Arrow in it is completely unrivaled. He redefines the words "collector" and "fanatic" ... but in a healthy way. To fulfill his passion for the cars, he bought a few square city blocks of empty office buildings and warehouses and filled them with his collection.
Now, the recent museum takes up one warehouse, modernized to fit a museum, and he hasn't stopped there. He's decided to build the only Frank Lloyd Wright gas station, according to Mr. Wright's designs; has events all year; and even restores anything with the words "Pierce-Arrow" stamped on it. His insane obsession is our win, however, because he's a wealth of information about car history, and the museum is simply amazing.
Well, before you could say, "Frank Lloyd Wright," we were back on the bus and off to the Darwin-Martin House, designed and built by the architect himself. The Darwin-Martin house is a suburban house, which at first glance from a distance, seems to blend in perfectly with the neighborhood. Upon closer inspection, you see the design of Frank Lloyd Wright, which has typical Wright features like horizontal lines everywhere. Wright seemed to love the horizon and felt it was a great feature to add to American architecture, so the house has a seemingly endless array of horizontal lines covering the roofline, the ceilings, panels and connecting hallways.
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Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House | |
Inside, there are two major features to look for: the windows and the entranceways. It didn't seem as if Wright liked any rooms simply being a way to get from one place to the other, so he would make you feel rather uncomfortable until you got where you were going. That is, the hallways and entranceways were excessively low. Sometimes as low as 6 feet high, you were forced to duck and kind of jump into the next room. So, for example, some rooms, which were completely connected except for an arch, now felt like independent rooms because the separating arch was so low. The other aspect to look for are the windows -- some of which are original and have art deco type patterns only usually seen in museums and books on museums.
Well, after Frank Lloyd Wright, it was time to head over to dinner at the Park Lane Restaurant. Located on Delaware Ave, The Park Lane Restaurant is an artfully restored mansion now turned into a gourmet restaurant. All along Delaware Ave were dozens of Mansions -- this being one of them -- from the turn of the century. Now, the restaurant has been around for quite a few decades and serves dishes from seafood to steak.
One of the biggest reasons for me to come here, though, was to be in one of the historic mansions. In the turn of the century, there were dozens of mansions along Delaware Ave. Some have been converted to office buildings and apartments, while some have been removed, but very few I've seen still remain in pristine condition. The Park Lane is historic for that reason alone.
Read part 1 | Read part 2 | Read part 4
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