Austin Fox: Our Man For All Seasons

by John H. Conlin

This story orignally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of the Buffalo Spree magazine.

For the past fifteen years an article on local history and architecture authored by Austin M. Fox has been an eagerly anticipated regular feature of Buffalo Spree. Mr. Fox died December 26, 1996 at age 83 after a brief illness. Fox was a true renaissance man: athlete, teacher, civic leader, writer, historian, raconteur and proud family man. He was born in Buffalo and considered himself to be a product of its soil. He was its best friend.

When someone once pointed out that the stately maple tree in front of his house was doing damage to the sidewalk, he responded that he didn't want to hear anything against that tree. "It's a lot like me," he said. "It's big, old, persistent, and its roots are deep in this place."

Austin Fox was an English teacher and long-time Chairman of the English Department at Nichols School. He retired from Nichols in 1978 after 37 years. In Buffalo, wherever he went he was recognized by someone from the legions of his former students -- students to whom he tried to transmit his own zest for life, literature and the place we call "home." Pliny Hayes, his long time friend and associate from Nichols, called Austin's learning "encyclopedic." He read everything he could get his hands on "and remembered everything he read." Everything. When Robert Campbell, architecture critic for the Boston Globe and a former student (and now a Pulitzer Prize winner), returned to Buffalo in 1990 for a Landmark Society lecture at the Albright Knox, Austin conversed with him about "a very good paper on Canterbury Tales" Campbell had written for him over 35 years earlier.

Before he retired from Nichols, Fox had embarked on a second career. In 1974 he became intensely involved in the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier's hard fought effort to stop a developer from demolishing three adjacent Delaware Avenue mansions. The issue was won. The mansions were saved. The local preservation movement had become empowered. A trend that for two decades had been eroding the architectural excellence of Delaware Avenue was brought to a final halt. It was a sweetly savored victory for Austin Fox. Near the completion of a full and distinguished career as an educator, he caught his second wind as a community leader nonpareil in the forefront of a movement seeking respect for a public legacy, Buffalo's architecture.

In the bicentennial year, while Austin was president of the Landmark Society, a city preservation board was established. Fox would serve on that Board continuously, including several years as its Chairman, for the next 18 years. No one has served longer. In that time he was involved in many issues that were tension-filled and controversial. Often he found respected friends on opposite sides of an issue. Yet he always moved through the maze of conflicting loyalties with the confidence of an athlete at the top of his game. His ultimate criterion in these matters was, as fellow preservationist Jason Aronoff recalls, "to do always what he thought was best for Buffalo." Fox always brought his considerable talents and influence to bear on an issue, but his most powerful weapon was his own personal presence and credibility.

An expertise he pressed into service for Buffalo was that of editor and author. He was one of the editors of the highly successful Buffalo Architecture: A Guide (MIT Press, 1981) and was editor of Erie County's Historical Legacy (The Erie County Preservation Board, 1983). He authored Designated Landmarks of the Niagara Frontier (Meyer Enterprises, 1986) and Symbol and Show (Meyer Enterprises, 1987) on Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition of 1901. Church Tales of the Niagara Frontier (Western New York Wares, 1994) was written as a history of our area seen through its churches.

When the Courier Express ceased publication, a weekly column written by Austin Fox was lost. Simply called "Context,"' it was about architecture as a physical and cultural context of our lives. Shortly after the Courier's demise, Mr. Fox began his series of articles in Buffalo Spree. The premise and rationale were the same as those of the former column, and that title provides us with a clue as to how Austin's second career was a natural extension of the first. Just as a passage of literature out of context is deprived of its full significance, neither people nor buildings can be properly understood apart from their context. The text to be read closely and infinitely explicated was that of Buffalo and Western New York, our surroundings, our context of human design embedded in history. Fox said buildings were "metaphors for the human verities."

The articles he wrote for Spree constitute a substantial body of work of extraordinary range and variety. Architecture from the vernacular cottages of the West Side to elegant mansions of Delaware Avenue; the work of the American triumvirate, Richardson, Sullivan and Wright; modern and postmodern buildings -- all came under the scrutiny of his native eye. Local history, including the burning of Buffalo, the Underground Railway and the trial of McKinley's assassin, was intertwined with genealogies and seasoned with choice bits of little-known fact from that encyclopedic memory.

Three stories ranking among his favorites were those of Buffalo architect Edward A. Kent (designer of the Unitarian-Universalist Church at Elmwood and Ferry Sts.), who went down with the Titanic after gallantly relinquishing his place in a lifeboat and is now buried in Forest Lawn; Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft, a master of American modernism (designer of the Lever Building in Manhattan and of the Albright Knox addition), who was a schoolmate and fellow member of the tennis team with Austin at Lafayette High; and the tale of the death of General Wadsworth of Geneseo in the Civil War and his special connection to Austin's own McCracken ancestors. For this article he used his full name: Austin McCracken Fox.

Austin Fox lived in a place that was rich in meaning. He attributed his interest in architecture to early memories of the simple white Greek Revival house of his grandmother McCracken in architecturally sophisticated Albion, NY and at the opposite end of the spectrum, to impressions made by the dark, brooding Richardsonian Romanesque Erie County Savings Bank at Shelton Square, where his father, Henry Fox, had had a law office. His affection for Western New York was, in his words, "beyond a mere loyalty based on place of birth or residence, or upon just an old-shoe familiarity." It had nothing to do with hollow boosterism or sloganeering. It was a focus on the human reality, those verities which are not better or worse in one part of the country or another, but can't be understood devoid of context. He liked to quote a line of Thoreau: "I've traveled much in Concord," meaning, said Austin, "that he had found many things to observe closely there."

Fox loved what he termed the "sleuthing" of architectural history. That, too, was similar to the exegesis of a literary text, paying close attention to details, looking for symbols and imagery as clues to latent meaning, observing the repetitions and rhythms inherent in an artist's style. According to Fox, "The traits that make Hamlet a masterwork of literature are similar to those that make the Guaranty Building a masterwork of architecture." Austin never talked down to his audience. His ideal reader was apparently a mirror image of himself: intelligent, well-read, witty and already interested.

There is no way of measuring how much Austin Fox altered the world around us through his many years of teaching, writing, lecturing and preservation leadership. He has made a difference. By continually working to enhance an already rich artistic legacy, he himself has become part of that legacy. By enlivening our surroundings and making us see them differently, he has influenced those surroundings as much as any artist could aspire to do.

His four children: Sally, Stephen, Susan and Cindy, have been justifiably proud of their father's accomplishment-filled life. It is gratifying to note that Austin Fox knew his efforts were recognized and appreciated by many. In 1987 he received the Owen Augspurger Award from the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society for achievement in local history. He prized it greatly. In 1991 the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier broke its tradition of never bestowing awards on its own Board members by joining with the Historical Society and the Erie County Preservation Board to honor Fox's "lifelong contribution to local history and architectural preservation." Austin shared this honor with his wife, Jean Coatsworth Fox, who, he said, made it possible for him to follow those interests. They were married in 1944.

The most obvious sign that he was not "a voice crying in the wilderness" was the great following he had. The public responded to his lectures by filling auditoriums regardless of the topic He retained a teacher's appreciation for applause.

The last conversation this writer had with Austin was a mid-December telephone call. He said the final article he would write for Spree had been published. "F. Scott Fitzgerald in Buffalo. It's pretty good. Going out on a literary note" Then he said, "At this time of the year, John, I like to remember our trip to Christie's in New York City. I remember it as one of the truly great adventures of my life. A real high point"

To understand why that was such a cherished memory one would have to know how earnestly Austin had hoped for the restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin Martin House. Kevin Gaughan, Erie County Legislative Assistant and a former student, remembering Austin, noted how Fox felt his city's pain with every setback. Seeing original artifacts from the Darwin Martin House leave Buffalo was just such a poignant blow. On learning that an important pair of long lost art-glass windows removed from the entrance to the Martin House were about to be sold at a New York City auctionhouse, the Landmark Society of the Niagara Frontier immediately mounted an effort to retrieve them for Buffalo. It was a highly ambitious objective.

Only the day before the scheduled auction were arrangements put in place commissioning Austin Fox to go to Christie's and bid up to a total of $100,000 for the windows. They were in separate lots, and each carried an estimate of $75,000. Fox and I took an early flight out of Buffalo the day of the sale and were among the first to arrive at the Park Avenue auctionhouse. It was the annual Arts & Crafts auction, with record setting prices expected. The room was theater-like, focused on a stage centered with a Chippendale-style mahogany pulpit for the auctioneer.

Austin had never been to such an auction. There was no opportunity for practice. Our strategy was to come away with at least one of the windows, and we knew it would have to be the first one (because on the second we would be bidding against someone trying to complete the pair). Austin said this was like entering a major league batter's box and having to hit a home run on the first pitch. After two hours of ever increasing anxiety while record prices were being set, we heard the announcement, "Lot 115 Rare and Important Leaded Glass Window from the Darwin Martin House." The adrenalin was flowing. Austin caught the auctioneer's eye and entered into the flurry of rapid-fire bidding that ended abruptly with a sharp crack of the stone gavel which was also the sound of Austin hitting a home run.

This was no time to breathe easily. We had obtained one window at half of its estimate, and would try for the pair. The bidding for Lot 116 went by $5,000 increments. This was heady stuff. While the auctioneer was calling for a bid of $40,000, an anonymous telephone bidder hesitated a little too long, and Austin calmly raised his number to receive the second win. A group of people we had talked with before the auction broke into applause at this result. Noting a puzzled look on the face of the auctioneer (such breaches of decorum were rare), I took the pleasure of rising and announcing to all present, "These windows are going back to the Martin House in Buffalo, where they belong." The entire room of over 300 international art dealers and collectors burst into applause. Austin said, "This is a good time to make an exit" We did so, elated. The windows are now in storage at the Albright Knox awaiting the house's complete restoration. Austin was extremely grateful to the nearly one hundred individual donors and the three local foundations who made the success of that adventure possible.

In that same last conversation, Austin asked for confirmation of his request that I continue the Spree articles on local history and architecture. It was a compliment of a high order, yet I had some reservations. "But you are my choice," he said matter-of-factly, as if that should end the matter. And it did.

There was a saying by Abraham Lincoln that Austin particularly liked and used as an epigram to one of his books. It seems appropriate to evoke it here:

I like to see a man proud of the place in which he lives. I like to see a man live so that his place will be proud of him.

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