Delaware Avenue Historic District

Fourteen large buildings along the west side of Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, between North and Bryant Streets, make up this two-block district. Set back on broad lawns behind tree-lined sidewalks, they are the last surviving stretch of an avenue once praised as one of the finest residential streets in the country. Westminster Presbyterian Church, built in 1858, and a nearby brick cottage-like house are the only mid-nineteenth-century buildings. The rest were built mostly between 1890 and the First World War for the city's business leaders. Notable designs include a pair of houses by McKim, Meade and White for the Williams family, a Gothic residence by Edward Green for Stephen Clement, and a Renaissance Revival villa by Charles Pierrepont H. Gilbert for Seymour Knox. Buffalo's prosperity, boosted by the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, drove this wave of building. Many of the houses are now used by charitable, educational and religious organizations, which has helped keep the turn-of-the-century character of the street.