Beyond the Blueprint: Buffalo’s Adirondack Connections

May 29 – June 1, 2024

Join AARCH in late May to explore the connections between the Adirondacks and Buffalo, tour some of Buffalo’s iconic architectural masterpieces, and see how a nonprofit has transformed a historic church into a center for construction trades training. Our visit will focus on the works of prolific architecture firm Green and Wicks, who both had Adirondack connections, particularly at the Wilmurt Club and Adirondack League Club near Old Forge.

We will meet as a group in Buffalo at our host hotel, the historic Richardson Hotel, a National Historic Landmark designed by architect Henry Hobson Richardson in 1870 as a Kirkbride Plan state hospital. The surrounding grounds were designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Wednesday dinner is on your own, but we will gather for an informal meet-up at the hotel that evening. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday mornings we will enjoy a continental breakfast at the Richardson Hotel before starting our day of touring Buffalo, transported by coach bus.

Thursday includes a tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House, another National Historic Landmark and considered to be one of the architect’s finest Prairie Style dwellings. We will have lunch in the Martin House courtyard before heading to the recently reopened AKG Art Museum in Buffalo’s Frederick Law Olmsted-designed Delaware Park. Guided by architectural historian Tom Yots, we will trace the evolution of this world-class modern art museum’s campus from the 1905 building, designed by architect Edward Broadhead (E.B.) Green, through the 1961 addition by Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft of the firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, to the recently opened 2023 Jeffrey E. Gundlach Building, designed by the architecture firm OMA. Our Thursday concludes with cocktail hour, dinner, and a tour at the historic Garret Club. Founded in 1902, the current Garret Club building was designed by Edward B. Green Jr., son of architect E.B. Green, and built in 1929.  

Friday will begin with a tour of the Richardson Olmsted campus, seeing spaces in H.H. Richardson’s state hospital building that remain the same as they were when the state left the building in the 1970s. Following our tour of the Richardson building, we will head to Assembly House 150, a nonprofit construction trades skill-building workshop in a formerly vacant historic church. Another historic Buffalo women’s club, the Twentieth Century Club, will host us for lunch and a tour on Friday. The Twentieth Century Club, designed by Green and Wicks in two phases, 1896 and 1905, is one of the earliest women’s clubs in the country, founded in 1894. The music room at the Twentieth Century Club, named the Alice Glenny Room, contain a series of life-sized mural painted by the artist, Alice Russell Glenny. Following lunch, we will tour other Green and Wicks-designed buildings, including the Georgia Forman House, designed by the firm Edward B. Green and Son, successor to Green and Wicks.

Friday’s program will end with a tour of Buffalo’s Silo City, a majestic 14-acre complex of grain silos along the Buffalo River and early terminus of the Erie Canal, and dinner at Duende, a former flour company office in the heart of Silo City.

Saturday morning, our Buffalo adventure will conclude with a special tour of Kleinhans Music Hall, a National Historic Landmark opened in 1940 and designed by Finnish-American architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen, influential in introducing modernism into mainstream American culture. Kleinhans is also the performance home of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra.

Pricing*
AARCH Member (double room): $1,490
AARCH Member (single room): $1,775
Non-Member (double room): $1,640
Non-Member (single room): $1,925

*Cost includes 3 nights at the Richardson Hotel, Thursday and Friday continental breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus Saturday continental breakfast, meal gratuities, private coach busing, and all tour costs. It does not include Wednesday dinner or Friday night alcoholic beverages. Refunds will be issued at the discretion of Adirondack Architectural Heritage unless AARCH has to cancel the tour.

Please contact Erin Tobin with any questions at erin@aarch.org or 518-834-9328 ext. 1.