File:Reginald V. Williams House, Buffalo, New York - 20220215.jpg

English: The Reginald V. Williams House, 85 Meadow Road, Buffalo, New York, February 2022. A contributing property to the NRHP-listed Parkside West Historic District, the Williams House is a 1928 work of Frederick C. Backus, who at the time had recently resigned his post as city architect to establish his own practice, and would later help to pioneer the revolutionary Modernist aesthetic on the local level as senior partner in the firm of Backus, Crane & Love. The Neoclassical style he employs here is refined and elegant, though it was perhaps a touch passé for its era. Here, behind a quartet of two-story Doric pilasters, looms a scrupulously symmetrical façade centered on a shallow semicircular Doric entry porch topped consecutively by a wrought-iron balconet (hidden behind the Buffalo Bills flag in this image) and a round-arched window with simple tracery. A trio of pedimented dormers pierce the side-gabled roof at attic level. One of Western New York's foremost authorities on industrial metallurgy, Reginald V. Williams (1894-1967) was the Canadian-born founder and chairman of the Williams Gold Refining Company, a manufacturer of precious metal alloys for the dentistry and electronics industries. He lived in the house from its completion until his death.