File:Rand Building, Lafayette Square, Buffalo, NY - 52686069740.jpg

English: Built in 1929, this Art Deco-style 29-story skyscraper was designed by James W. Kideney & Associates and Franklyn and William Kidd, and was the tallest building in Buffalo upon its completion, today being the city’s second-tallest building. The building was named for George F. Rand, Sr., whom was a long-term president and chairman of the Marine Midland Corporation Bank, but died in a plane crash in England in 1919. It stands on the site of the former Olympic Theater, and the Park Hof Restaurant Building, which were built in the early 20th Century, were demolished for the tower, themselves having replaced the old Lafayette Presbyterian Church, built in the mid-19th Century, and a victorian-era house. Early plans for the building called for it to be twice as wide, taking up the entire northern flank of Lafayette Square, and to have twin towers on the roof, a plan that never materialized as the owner of the Buffalo German Insurance Company Building, formerly located to the west from 1876 until 1957, refused to sell the building to Marine Midland Corporation, and with the subsequent onset of the Great Depression and the resulting major slowdown in Buffalo’s economic and population growth permanently cancelled those plans. Eventually, the Tishman Building was built on the site slated for the west wing of the Rand Building twenty years later.

The building has an L-shaped footprint, from which it rises sixteen stories before the first, smallest setback, with another three stories above the first setback, with a smaller spire with a square footprint rising another ten stories to the base of the building’s communications tower, with setbacks at the corners of the 28th floor, and a small 29th floor, which is more of a small penthouse than a full floor of the building. The building’s base is clad in terra cotta, with large, two-story window openings with bronze mullions and spandrel panels with decorative patterns, an entrance bay in the middle of the south facade with decorative trim, granite panels at the base of the terra cotta cladding, the words “Rand Building” etched into the facade above the main entrance door bay, and unadorned third floor windows, with a row of belt coursing with decorative patterns at the top of the base. Above the base, the building features some terrace cotta trim, but transitions to being clad in tan brick, with recessed window bays running from the fourth through the sixteenth floors, with decorative brick spandrels, pilasters with decorative caps, a band of terra cotta belt coursing above the fourth floor windows, decorative relief panels in the spandrels above the sixteenth story windows at the east and west ends of the south facade, and a stepped carpet with a stone cap that encloses a low-slope roof running around the base of the seventeenth floor. The seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth floors have the same facade treatment as the three floors immediately below them, but with more closely-spaced bays due to the reduced width. Above the nineteenth floor is a more slender ten-story spire with buttresses flanking the central bays on each side on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd floors, topped with decorative cylindrical geometric elements, three windows in the central bay with one window in the outer bays, separated by pilasters, with the recessed bays running vertically up the building and featuring decorative recessed brick spandrel panels. The top of the spire features arched windows in the outer bays with recessed decorative brick panels and pilasters at the central bay, with the outer bays terminating at the base of the 28th floor, with small corner low-slope roofs above enclosed by parapets with setbacks at the corners, and a low-slope roof enclosed by a parapet at the top of the building, with an octagonal 29th floor penthouse at the base of the communication tower at the top of the building. The rear of the spire has a smokestack that was originally intended for the building’s furnace, and a penthouse above the building’s northern staircase at the roof. The northwest corner of the building is cut away from the adjacent properties, creating a light well that allows for light and air to reach the interior spaces on the northern and western sides of the building.

The building today houses a variety of commercial office tenants with retail tenants in the retail spaces at the ground floor. The lobby has been well preserved and still features the original elevator doors, elevator indicator lights, ceiling painted with murals, travertine walls, bronze windows and trim, letter boxes, ashtrays, bronze chandeliers, and a large memorial plaque dedicated to George F. Rand, Sr. The building is an understated and conservative variant of the Art Deco style, which matches its origins as a bank building perfectly. Today, it finds itself among a cluster of four other high-rises, of which it is the tallest, with two of the high rises being built in the International style after World War II, and two being clad in tan brick and having been built in the 1920s.