Essay	Requiem for a House by Doug Levy

The property that once stood at 399 Franklin Street is no more. It was demolished late in July; all that exists in its place now is a flat gravel expanse, the site development in anticipation of the addition that will be built onto the adjacent building at 401 Franklin, a printing company.

The house that stood at 399 Franklin was built in 1872 and was otherwise architecturally unremarkable. By the 1920s it had been converted into a rooming house with the addition of a long rear wing. In recent memory, it had been vacant and slowly deteriorating. It was purchased by Ralph Salerno, owner of the printing company, at least a decade ago. He looked into restoring it to some kind of residential use, but cost and code issues deterred him. Seven years ago, he approached the city with his plan to demolish the building in order to expand his business. His proposal was denied by the city’s Preservation Board, which has the authority to approve, even direct that modifications be made to, any developer’s proposal to build or renovate in one of the city’s several historic preservation districts. Three ninety-nine Franklin Street is located within the Allentown Historic District.

Learning from that experience, and consulting with Preservation Board staff, Salerno used the intervening years to revise and perfect his plan into something that would be more acceptable to the board. Last fall, he made his presentation and was received with sympathetic interest. His plan for the new building included an exterior designed to meld pleasingly with the general neighborhood, at least as well as the commercial buildings across and slightly down the street from it. The façade of 401 Franklin, he said, would be restored to its original 19th-century appearance—that building, according to Salerno, earlier being a barn for carriages.

I attended this public hearing as the representative of the Allentown Association, Inc., the 40-plus-year-old community organization whose mission includes encouraging historical preservation and building maintenance. I had been assured that several individuals from the immediate neighborhood would attend the meeting to protest Salerno’s plans. None of them appeared. I restricted my comments to how Allentown has evolved into a largely residential community in which commercial concerns are limited to retail, hospitality and service companies, and that expansion of light manufacturing, as proposed in Salerno’s plan, was in this light unprecedented. The board did not accept my arguments. Pending his architect’s providing it with a small amount of additional information, the Preservation Board gave its tentative approval to Salerno’s development plan, and with unanimity voted to approve the demolition of 399 Franklin Street, a 134-year-old house in an historic preservation district.

It pains me whenever I drive past the barren lot that was once 399 Franklin. Admittedly, the building was unsightly and rundown, with boarded windows and graffitied walls. But the house was not in danger of falling down, and for a while I entertained the fantasy that Salerno might be persuaded to sell the property in exchange for a permanent easement that would permit him to expand his business on most of the property behind the original house where the 1920s wing, being both historically and architecturally not worth saving, had previously stood. But I was reminded that Salerno’s plans were to use the entire property; it was too late ask him to change course now.

That empty lot reminds me that the city, at a time when it is gearing up to be a major attraction for architectural tourists, chose to allow the demolition of an historic house in a preservation district, one that was located literally at its southern gateway. And it made this choice—justifiably, one might argue—because of economic concerns. Salerno admitted at the hearing that he had looked at moving to the suburbs and considered their many advantages, but wished to remain in the city. Speaking realistically, an Allentown Association board member told me that to oppose the demolition too strenuously would mean two vacant buildings on Franklin Street where there is now only one. Not to mention the loss of jobs.

If there is anyone to blame here, it is City Hall. This city does not enforce its own laws, allowing absentee landlords to perpetuate the “demolition by neglect” of their properties. While the city has the option to condemn and tear down such structures generally, this is not—or at least should not be—possible in historic districts like Allentown. To make matters worse, this city has no preservation plan, nothing that the Preservation Board can refer to when rendering their decisions. At the moment, it does the best it can to weigh the cultural (e.g. historic, aesthetic) against the economic needs of the community. Unequivocally, the Preservation Board’s decision regarding the demolition of 399 Franklin Street has set precedent, one that was quickly used by the owner of Pano’s Restaurant to bring down the neighboring Atwater House on Elmwood Avenue, a doomed property that got a reprieve from the wrecking ball only when the Planning Board accepted the Preservation Board’s recommendation that it be preserved, even though it did not stand in a historic district.

But most regrettable was the lost opportunity that presented itself in 1999, when Salerno first proposed his expansion plans. Had anyone at City Hall or the Buffalo Niagara Partnership been paying attention, an effort might have been made to find him a suitable new home in one of the city’s Enterprise Zones, where Salerno’s company could freely expand and have off-street parking, a loading dock and below-market-rate electric power. To sweeten the deal, the city might have offered to pay to move the company, at a cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, but certainly less than $100,000. Instead, the city courts Bass Pro, ready to throw millions of dollars at an enterprise with dubious chances for success.

And the city would have done this because it believes (or so it says) that it had an interest in keeping 399 Franklin Street standing. It wanted this because every 19th-century house in Buffalo is a part of the setting that holds as its crowning jewels the Darwin Martin House, the Guaranty Building and a handful of other magnificent and important buildings. If the city is serious about promoting architectural tourism, then it must do all it can to preserve, protect and maintain those very buildings that these hoped-for tourists will come to Buffalo to see. This will take a real preservation plan and financial support for a lot of smaller projects, rather than putting everything on questionable big-ticket projects like Bass Pro. Otherwise, all we can expect are more 399 Franklin Streets.