Pierce Arrow Factory Complex

Covering 34 acres in Buffalo, this former automobile plant was built in 1906-7 for the George N. Pierce Company, maker of Pierce-Arrow cars. It includes about fourteen major buildings, among them a long Administration Building on Elmwood Avenue, one-story Manufacturing and Assembly buildings with sawtooth roofs, and a 1,150-foot Body Building along Great Arrow Avenue. Reinforced concrete was used for the structure. Albert Kahn's firm, Lockwood, Greene and Company, and the Trussed Concrete Steel Company took part in the design. The plant is noted because it combined clear interior spans, wide window walls, roof lighting and horizontal circulation from process to process, a pattern later copied in many factories. An arrow motif remains in the brickwork and stair railings of the Administration Building. The company went bankrupt in 1938, and the complex is now used for commercial enterprises, union meeting rooms, truck garages and warehouses. Alterations have covered many windows and roofs, yet the structures remain largely intact.