One of Buffalo's Old Homes
by L.E. Moss
The Buffalo Express, September 27, 1908

It is a stately old home, built of brick, now dark and weather beaten. From the square gabled ends of the roof four tall chimneys, begrimed with nearly a century's smoke, look out to watch the gradual transition in the landscape round about. Old trees interlace branches about the old walls, and the shutters at the row of windows nestle into the crevices of the old stone frames. Such is the old Bird house on Niagara Street near Ferry Street.

The door opens and you are admitted to the quaint atmosphere of the house of last century. For this old home, the second oldest in the city, has been kept exactly as it was when its original owner, William A. Bird, died [30] years ago. The dim old hall passes through the entire length of the home, as they built in those days. To right and left are spacious library and dining room and airy drawing rooms and behind these are the kitchen and servants' rooms. A little stairway, oddly small in proprortion to the hall and rooms that surround it, another characteristic of those days, leads aloft. And where the hall narrows to accomodate its width, an oblong of light marks the back door, which stands open, with its green vines nodding their cool shade above the little verandada beyond.

Standing on the back porch you gain a glimpse of what might be a picture of Old England. A long gravel walk runs straight from the back door to the gate in the back fence, through the whole length of the deep old garden. And beyond the grapevines that are trellised beside the walk, is a sea of stately hollyhocks of brilliant colors, some leaning against the brown fence and others clustering among the old apple and pear trees. A tangle of growing things overran the garden, for the owner has cared little of late years to have it kept in order. Where is the use when hordes of impertinent youngsters come and carry off the products? - come with baskets even and gather up fruits and vegetables, not waiting for them to mature.

In the old days when the house was built there was no Niagara Street, so the house faced the river, and what is now its back was then the front, with the long walk down to the gate. "We had no Niagara Street then," said Miss Grace Bird, the present owner, when talking to a reporter of The Express the other day, "we used to drive to the village (Buffalo village) in the sand along the river shore. There was a clear view of the lake from the porch and windows and we could see the vessels coming into the harbor. It's all changed now, and that brewery has built up and spoiled our view."

Nevertheless, says Miss Bird, she loves the dear old home and every seat and chair in it carries associations of the days gone by. She is a woman at once gracious and retiring, the last, she says, of her generation. While she receives the visitor with cordial interest, she loves privacy and values her independence and the shelter of the home she has known all her life. There are many interesting objects in the old house, relics of other days. Portraits, now mellow and cracked, of ancestors, who were prominent in early days, adorn the walls of the living-rooms. And a pair of delicate wax reliefs of a young man and woman (Miss Bird's mother and father) framed under glass are among the treasures of the old home, that are wonderful in themselves as to art and workmanship. Old mahogany chairs and tables and a little writing desk all are eloquent of last century.

Miss Bird is now the sole occupant of the old homestead - she with her servants. Her father was William A. Bird, who came here from Connecticut with his uncle, Colonel Porter, back in 1819, as secretary of the American boundary commission. He was a young man of 23 then and when the work of locating the line was finished settled permanently at Black Rock, building his house there and investing in property. He afterwords became one of the founders of the Erie County Savings Bank and was with it for 23 years. The old brick house was built in 1819 and 1820 and therein were born all his four children. Colonel Bird (the rank of colonel he gained by courtesy only) was member of the Assembly for a time, but his uncle's house being so near, and Colonel Porter being so well known in Washington, most of the distinguised guests of the family were entertained at the uncle's.

However, the present owner tells of Henry Clay visiting the old home as a friend, how on his last trip North, he came with a negro body servant, himself in poor health. When it was time to go home Mr. Clay's servant was not to be found. The abolitionists had got hold of him and induced him to desert his master. So Mr. Clay went South alone.

Some two weeks afterward the family at the old brick house were surprised by a visit from an old negro. He turned out to be the missing servant. He was very penitent and very lonely for his old master. He begged to be sent back South again.

Time shaped things differently from the anticipations of Colonel Porter and Colonel Bird, and when the canal was built with Buffalo village as its terminal, Black Rock people saw the mistake they had made. Business went the other way. The old Black Rock or Kistangoi of the Indians, just below the Bird home - a flat dark stone where the Indians used to tie up their canoes - was left out in the suburbs.

But William Bird lived on in the house, nevertheless, and his family grew up under its roof. Some years after building, he planned to have the back of the deep lot leveled off (it had been left as originally found by these pioneer builders) and workmen set to work. In the center of the lot of thereabout, they came upon a mound. It was opened and disclosed an old kettle in which were found packed many human skulls. Around the cauldron raidiated the skeletons of human beings, like the spokes of a wheel, each with a hatchet uner the head. It is supposed that a party of French scouts had been ambushed here by the Indians and buried thus.

This is the second oldest house in Buffalo, next to the old Porter home, and since that has been surrounded by the walls of an automobile factory [Thomas Motor Car] and hidden from public view this is the oldest house left as originally built. Nothing has been changed, although four generations of the name have walked in its gardens and looked from its windows on a changing city.