File:Buffalo City Hall, Niagara Square, Buffalo, NY - 52685120692.jpg

English: Built in 1929-1931, this Art Deco-style 25-story skyscraper was designed by the firm of Dietel, Wade and Jones to serve as the city hall for the city of Buffalo. Prior to the construction of city hall, the city government of Buffalo was housed in the County and City Hall, built 60 years prior. The city more than quadrupled in population from 125,000 to over 500,000 in the half-century between the 1870s and 1920s, which prompted the city government to start planning the construction of a dedicated, separate city hall building to house city offices and the city council. The west side of Niagara Square was chosen as the site for the building, necessitating the first major alteration to the city’s original street grid with the closure of the block of Court Street running west from the square. The site was previously home to the Greek Revival-style mansion of former Buffalo mayor Samuel Wilkeson, which had been demolished and replaced by a gas station in 1915, which itself was replaced by City Hall. By the time that City Hall was being constructed, Niagara Square had transitioned from a fashionable residential enclave lined with the mansions of the city’s elite to a major civic center and an extension of the city’s central business district, with the high-rise Statler Hotel and substantial Buffalo Athletic Club sitting on the north and south sides of the square. Shortly after the completion of city hall, two Stripped Classical-style federal office buildings were built on the east side of the square along Court Street, solidifying the area’s status as a major cultural and governmental center for the city. At the time of its construction, the 32-story 398-foot-tall city hall was one of the city’s tallest buildings, though the earlier Rand Tower at Lafayette square exceeded it in height. The building was finished at a transition point, as the Great Depression caused the city’s double-digit growth rate to slow to less than one percent in the 1930s, and then begin a long decline in the 1950s from nearly 600,000 people that would continue through the 2010s, when the city neared a population of 250,000. In the same time period, the metropolitan area around the city, following the trends of other struggling postindustrial cities in the Great Lakes and Rust Belt region, grew from under 1 million residents in the 1930s, to over 1.3 million in the 1970s, before declining to 1.1 million by the 2010s. Given when it was built, the building, like Buffalo Central Terminal, represents the city when it was nearing its peak, right before it began a cycle of decline that only ended in the past decade.

The building features an octagonal base three stories tall, with multiple places where the building’s tower features setbacks, giving it a distinctive Art Deco silhouette and meaning that, by the time the building reaches the top floor, the footprint of the floor is about 1/6 of that at ground level. The building is clad in Minnesota limestone and Amherst (Ohio) sandstone, with several courses of gray granite at the base. The building’s floors shrink as it rises, first setting back from South Elmwood Avenue to the rear, the chamfered corners at the diagonal radial avenues, and above the front portico at the third floor, before setting back further at the thirteenth floor, where the north and south wings terminate, and at the fifteenth floor, where the two wings immediately north and south of the portico that extend eastward towards Niagara Square terminate. The tops of each setback feature a low-slope roof enclosed by a sandstone parapet. Above this, the tower slowly transitions from a square footprint to an octagonal footprint, before ending in an octagonal roof with polychromatic decorative masonry, Iroquois busts at the corners, and ribs atop the roof. The building features many historic metal casement windows that open inward, making them easy to clean without the need for exterior window washers. Most window bays, except those on the fourth and thirteenth floors and outer bays of the taller setbacks and tower, feature decorative recessed spandrel panels in copper or stone, flanked by pilasters, which emphasize the building’s verticality. The front portico also emphasizes its verticality, featuring a cluster of fluted sandstone columns with decorative capitals supporting an architrave with a decorative carved relief that represents the city’s history and industrial prowess. The ceiling of the portico features recessed square and triangular patterns set at a 45-degree angle to the rest of the building, with decorative colorful circular trim pieces inside these recesses. Additionally, the entrance doors are on a recessed walls flanked by two concavely curved walls covered with flutes, and features decorative carved friezes on the stone spandrel panels over the doors. The rear facade, facing Court Street to the west at the exterior of the main Council Chamber, features a colonnade with engaged fluted columns flanking recessed windows and copper spandrel panels, with a large relief depicting the city’s history above. At the chamfered corners of the building, along the radial side streets, are two small plazas with statues of Grover Cleveland and Millard Fillmore, two former US Presidents whom lived in Buffalo.

The interior of the building is richly decorated with murals, bronze doors, decorative bronze panels, stone cladding, stone floors with brass inlays, fluted columns and pilasters, vaulted ceilings, decorative grilles, carved figurines, decorative tile ceilings, carved wooden doors, and a notable semi-circular stained glass skylight in the main council meeting chamber that depicts the sun. Many of the building’s murals were created by William de Leftwich Dodge, with sculptor Albert Stewart creating many of the friezes, and statues by Rene Paul Chambellan. A bronze tablet dedicated in honor of Mayor Roesch and installed in 1937 was created by William Ehrich. The building’s interior is cooled in the summer utilizing a system that catches breezes blowing in from the west off Lake Erie, channeling them into the basement for passive geothermal cooling, and then directed into the building’s air ventilation system. The top of the building features an open-air observation deck, which can be accessed via elevator, with a total of eight elevators serving the building on the lower floors, reducing in number for the smaller upper floors.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. It is one of the best examples of municipal Art Deco architecture in the world, and stands as a prominent symbol of the city of Buffalo, being one of the largest and tallest municipal buildings in the United States, and being prominently sited west of most of the skyscrapers in the city. The building helps create a major focal point on Niagara Square, and a sense of enclosure for the visual axis running west Court Street from Lafayette Square, located a few blocks to the east.