The view above was the entrance to the 13-acre estate of John J. Albright, whose
fortune came from Pennsylvania coal and the Buffalo's Lackawanna Steel Company.
It was located on West Ferry Street and occupied land bounded by Elmwood, Delaware and Cleveland Avenues. After the first Albright mansion burned in 1901, J.J. Albright engaged E. B. Green to design the Tudor mansion seen here to be located within park-like grounds designed by the Olmsted brothers. |
Above is a view of the grounds of the Albright estate. J. J. Albright made significant
contributions to Buffalo's
cultural heritage in the early 1900's by providing funds for the construction
of what would be known as the
Albright Art Gallery (today the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), and by donating
part of his estate's land at the
corner of West Ferry and Elmwood Avenue for the home of the Unitarian Universalist
Church. |
J. J. Albright lost most of his fortune in the Depression and died in 1931 at the age of 83. His E. B. Green home was demolished in 1935 but Green, who was overseeing the completion of his design of the Lockwood Memorial Library at the University of Buffalo, had the stone balustrade (visible in this photo) salvaged and re-installed in front of the library where it remains today. The Albright estate was sold in parcels for homes of the well-to-do. (Note: today, that UB library has been expanded
and renamed the Abbott Health Sciences Library;
the name "Lockwood Library" has been applied to the Graduate Library
at the University at Buffalo's
North Campus.) |