File:Smith-Block House, Buffalo, New York - 20200702.jpg

English: The Smith-Block House, 519 Richmond Avenue, Buffalo, New York, July 2020. Working in an eclectic interpretation of the Colonial Revival style that's common among his early-20th century residential commissions, architect John Coxhead bestowed on the house such distinguishing characteristics as a façade flanked by ornamental Ionic pilasters in brick; a front porch with a projecting central portion that matches the central bay window on the second story, with wrought-iron rails in front and an ample, segmental-arched front entrance behind, and - above all - an American Foursquare-influenced hip roof pierced in the front by a dormer utterly dominated by a Palladian window, save for a projecting pedimented gable with decorative brackets. An Ohio native, Edward James Smith (1862-1932) came to Buffalo as a child and quickly made a name for himself as a druggist and merchant, operating a chain of five-and-dime stores with his brother Lambert (1876-1923) and partner Louis L. Pfohl (1859-1907) that by the time of the house's construction in 1902 had begun to expand out of the Western New York area and into the Great Lakes and Midwest region. Pfohl & Smith was bought out a few years later by the F. W. Woolworth company, for whom he agreed to work as a consultant thereafter. By 1907, the house had passed into the hands of Joseph B. Block (1873-1963), a jeweler who at the time was employed with the Queen City Ring Manufacturing Company, whose modus operandi was to take Roycroft-inspired Arts and Crafts-style designs and simplify them for mass production. Block stayed with the company until its final demise in 1917, whereafter he took a brief detour into the world of cotton manufacturing with the Buffalo Batt & Felt Corporation, but by the time he moved out, in 1924, he was on familiar ground once again as an employee of LaFrance Jewelry Manufacturing.