Weed & Co. Wholesale Building - 100 Seneca Street


Hobart Weed, second generation owner.
"to know Hobart Weed was to be his friend."
Image source: private collection

Stone plaque on the front of the Weed Wholesale Building, 100 Seneca St.


The hardware firm of Weed & Co. was founded in 1818 in Buffalo. Youngest son of one of the founders, Hobart Weed
oversaw the continued growth of the company from 1876 to his death in 1915. During his tenure, the new Main Street
store was opened, replacing the smaller original space. He turned his attention to developing a wholesale branch
of the business.

 


The Weed Wholesale Building, Esenwein & Johnson, architects, completed 1905. Image source: private collection.

"...Weed leadership in the retail hardware business made it inevitable that the wholesale business would develop. Other merchants recognizing the vast buying capacity of Weed & Company, came to this house for stock...It would not have taken a sage to forecast the fact that under the direction of Hobart Weed, the wholesale business would be expanded every year. Mr. Weed's greatest capital was his habit of automatically making friends. Mr. Weed considered the accumulation of good will as important as selling goods...So with the extending of the wholesale business, Mr. Weed selected one hundred per cent assistants and proceeded to enlist the co-operation of manufacturers and retail dealers alike. The wholesale business occupied various warehouses on Pearl and Swan Streets until it more than justified a home of its own. Then in 1905, a palatial building, if one can so describe a hardware house, was made the headquarters oft the Weed & Company's Wholesale Department.

 


The renovated building in 2007, now called 100 Seneca Street.

"...An architect who believes that a commercial building may have the elements of beauty, designed this structure. There is something of the Spanish and Italian romantic quality about its coloring and over-hanging eaves, suggesting the epoch when commerce touched the Renaissance. There is also a dignity in its arches which compels your respect."

 


View of the "counting room" at the wholesale building. Image source: private collection.

"The interior is made for work, but under pleasant and healthful auspices. Light and air are essential to effectiveness in human beings. We are made for the woods and fields. To approximate open air labor in office work was the intent of the engineers in planning the Swan Street Building of Weed & Company."

All quotes "From Ox-Cart to Aeroplane, One Hundred Years of Successful Business," the history of Weed & Co. from 1818 to 1918.


100 Seneca Street, 2007

100 Seneca Street was long home of the Empire Realty Credit Corporation, a piece of the former Empire of America operations.
Then called Empire Plaza, the building was vacated in late November, 1996, when the company was sold. Buffalo developers
Frank McGuire and Carl Paladino purchased the building and renovated it for around $2.5 million dollars, creating 75,000
square feet of office space. In 2005, the NYS Department of Transportation determined to move its Region 5 headquarters into the
building from its previous headquarters in the Donovan Building. In 2007, one may veiw the DOT logo on the building.

For more information on Weed & Co., look here.


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