City of Buffalo Preservation Board·September 3, 2026
The board voted 7–0 to recommend landmark status for the St. Casimir Social Center and School on Clinton Street, then heard — without a vote to take — the plan to demolish the Otis Elevator foundry on Northland under a SHPO agreement, smokestack included. Approved: a Harold Arlen mural at Shea’s, Olmsted park signage, two window jobs. Three new landmark bids go to October hearings.
The first public hearing of the board's new season was for a building its presenter called “probably the most complicated building landmarked to date.” The St. Casimir Social Center and School, at 1823 and 1833 Clinton Street, was nominated by its new owner, and Preservation Buffalo Niagara's planner — who gave her name as Emily[*] — presented it on the owner's behalf, along with an amended map that she said she had sent to staff because the parcel picture kept changing. The board's staff planner was not present, a fact that would come up again.
The history she gave is a history of overcrowding. The building went up in 1906 as an annex to Public School 7 because the East Side was “growing like crazy”; in 1907 it began teaching English to immigrants, mostly Polish; by 1911 the adults were complaining of overcrowding too, so a ten-room addition followed in 1912, with one of the largest playgrounds she had encountered — a First World War necessity, she said, when fathers and older brothers were at the front, mothers worked, and nine-to-eleven-year-olds were minding their siblings. An eight-room “soldiers' annex” and a day nursery came in 1919. In 1933 it became an annex to School 69. In 1948 the Catholic Diocese, shopping for a home for Bishop Ryan High School, bought it and found it too small already; a gymnasium and a two-story classroom block followed in 1951, more in 1954, a garage in about 1956, and in 1959 the original 1906 school was demolished to make room for vocational shops. Bishop Ryan closed in 1970; after a dispute between the Diocese and the City over the building's future, St. Casimir parish bought it in 1973 and kept it until the 2025 sale. “I do believe there's a tiny fraction of School Number 7 left,” she said. “I was looking at walls behind faucets.”
The proposed period of significance runs from 1906 to 1959, and the application was considered under criteria 1, 3, 6 and 9 of the City's designation standards (Chapter 337). The new owner, she said, is also seeking a determination of eligibility for tax credits and “seems like they're going to be doing a great job with it.” Asked directly whether she was acting for the property owner, she said yes. No one, in the room or online, spoke for or against. The board closed the hearing and recommended approval, both 7–0. “This will move on to the Common Council Committee on Legislation for another public hearing, blah, blah, blah, and then back to the Council,” the presiding member said, and advised the owner to contact the district council member to make clear this was an owner-initiated nomination.
Board: Gwen Howard (presiding), Don Gilbert, Damante' Curry, Eric Lander, Ruth Bryant, Anthony James, Kevin Brady — the seven recorded on every vote. The summary minutes' roll call also lists Sam Gurney and Catherine Schweitzer; the tape has Gurney “not here,” and neither appears in any recorded vote. The presiding member abstained on the July 23 minutes, having missed that meeting. Staff: none present; the board's staff planner (Chris Hawley, Office of Strategic Planning) was referred to repeatedly in the third person.
Applicants heard: Preservation Buffalo Niagara for the St. Casimir owner; the Northland property owner's executive and demolition engineer; the owner of 72 North Pearl; a window contractor for 134 Mariner; the Buffalo AKG Art Museum's public-art curator for Shea's; an exhibit designer for the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy.
Public speakers: none at the St. Casimir hearing.
The Preservation Board does not designate landmarks; the Common Council does. Under Chapter 337 of the City Code, the board holds the first public hearing and decides whether the property meets at least one of the code's designation criteria; a favorable vote is a recommendation, which goes to the Council's Legislation Committee for a second hearing and then to the full Council for the vote that counts. Designation is what puts a property under the board's permanent jurisdiction: from then on, exterior work needs the board's certificate of appropriateness (or, for in-kind repairs, a staff-issued certificate of no effect), and demolition needs the board's review. Thursday's other landmark actions were one step earlier still — a determination of completeness only asks whether an application contains enough (criteria, photographs of all sides, a site plan, a history) for the board to hold that first hearing at all.
Item 4 was billed as a communication, and the presiding member said so twice: “This was an informational presentation. There's no action for us on this.” What the board got was 23 minutes on the end of the Otis Elevator Company Foundry Division complex at 741 and 777 Northland Avenue, at the eastern edge of the Northland corridor, presented by an executive vice president of the property owner — heard on the tape as the “Buffalo Development Corporation,” and identified by her as Becky[*] — with a historic-preservation consultant and the president of the demolition engineering firm. Consultation with the State Historic Preservation Office is finished, she said; a Letter of Resolution has been executed (the agenda's copy is dated August 5, 2025); and the owner has been working with the Department of Public Works on the demolition itself.
The history, as presented: both buildings were found eligible for the National Register in 2013 as part of a potential Northland historic district. The original 1913 block at 777 was a pattern and foundry annex to the main Otis Elevator factory across the street, which still stands; the complex served Otis for about 40 years, employed on the order of a thousand people, and in the Second World War turned out, among other things, elevators for aircraft carriers. Otis once planned to make the site a centerpiece of its operations and never did. After the war the buildings passed through Buffalo Stainless, Bell Aircraft (which bought 741 in 1950 and worked there on aircraft and a missile that “was not successful, ultimately”), and Curtiss-Wright, which bought 777 in 1951 for its metal-processing division, added 741 in 1958, ran a large extrusion business, and stayed 44 years before selling to a storage operator in 1995. The consultant said that when the character-defining features were catalogued during a 2019 Section 106 consultation — the factory's roof design, the foundation walls, the smokestack — the owner was still weighing reuse. Then came the intervening years: a 2020 event she described as having “a major impact” on the complex, roof collapses over tens of thousands of square feet, walls now open to the weather. In March 2025 SHPO concurred that the buildings had lost their integrity, and the mitigation deal followed.
The engineer walked through that deal. About 23 to 25 feet of the stone foundation will be dismantled block by block and rebuilt as a roughly six-foot-wide entrance feature that doubles as a planter, laid in the same capstone-and-course pattern, with a plaque. The two-piece steel Curtiss-Wright sign over the front entrance — 17½ feet long, 3½ feet high — comes down, goes to a shop, and is restored to its original condition for display somewhere still to be agreed with SHPO. The complex will be documented with drone imagery and scaled photographs because “there are not many” original drawings; that record becomes an interpretive display. Foundry molds found inside, “in pretty rough condition,” will be salvaged and displayed. The rest of the stipulations, he said, are administrative.
Then the board asked about the chimney. One member wanted to know whether a steel liner grouted to the brick could consolidate it — “because that is such an iconic feature.” The engineer said saving it had come up in the Section 106 review and was not feasible, for three reasons: decades of acidic flue gas eat the inside of a disused industrial stack even when it “looks fine from the outside”; the two-story structure around its base has collapsed, so “it's questionable if the chimney would stand”; and refractory brick in stacks like this is commonly impregnated with cadmium, which makes it hazardous waste. Could a smaller replica be built on the site? “The chimney will be well represented” in the interpretation, he said. “We're being careful to not say,” someone added. Another member went after the plaque — “most gravestones have more information on them than what's on the plaque” — and asked that an elevation drawing or photograph be included so a passerby has context; the team said the plaque is only for the entrance feature and the fuller story goes in the display. Asked what happens to the land, the owner's representative said the plan is to demolish and then market the site for industrial development; a member asked for design guidelines so the corridor does not get “some tilt-up concrete warehouse,” and was told the owner's 683 Northland project had incorporated the corridor's industrial vocabulary and this would too. No vote. “All right,” the presiding member said, “let's get cracking on the rest of this stuff.”
The board reviews demolitions of local landmarks and buildings in local historic districts. The Otis complex is neither: it was found eligible for the National Register, which is an honorific and a tax-credit gateway, not a local protection, and it was never nominated as a Buffalo landmark. What the presentation kept calling “Section 106” is the federal review that applies when federal money or a federal permit is involved in a project touching a Register-eligible property; it runs through the State Historic Preservation Office and ends not in a veto but in a negotiated Letter of Resolution — here, the foundation feature, the restored sign, the documentation and the display. That agreement was signed in August 2025. Thursday's appearance was a courtesy briefing on a deal already done, and the board's questions — the chimney, the plaque, what gets built next — were requests, not conditions.
72 North Pearl Street. The new owner, who gave his name as Jay Kelly[*], has a permit to convert the house to two units and came for the exterior piece: four attic windows replaced in fiberglass, three across the front gable and one at the rear. His plan was to take out the pieces between the three front windows and set them as one joined unit. A board member stopped him there: the existing openings are one-over-one, the mullions between them are structural — “there's at least two studs” — and wider glass with a thinner divider would not read the same. “I would vote against that.” The owner, who said he was “open to adjusting,” agreed to keep the rough openings and the dividers, and to put proper trim on when the aluminum siding on the gable comes off for the fish-scale shingles he plans later. The approval carried 7–0 on that condition: same window dimensions, dividing mullions retained, frames to match the existing rather than the vinyl-clad look. “There may be original trim under that capping,” a member said. “That's what we're hoping for.”
The applicant who was not on the agenda. When the presiding member called 134 Mariner Street, a man stepped up for 124 — a Mariner Street address that appeared nowhere on the docket. Several minutes of paging followed (“I don't have 124”), a check of Item 16 (144 Mariner, a certificate of no effect, already issued), and a pointed aside: “It would be very nice, since this applicant was told to come here, that someone would figure out what is on the agenda and what's not — since our staff isn't here.” A board member took his contact information and promised to follow up with the staff planner the next day. He had, he said, been in touch with staff the week before about changes to a project first filed in July.
134 Mariner Street. The actual applicant, a window contractor appearing online, then described 13 Marvin Infinity fiberglass double-hung inserts on the front, left and right elevations, replacing original wood windows that sit behind storm windows; the three gable windows with muntins are not being touched, which was the board's only question. Approved 7–0.
646 Main Street — Shea's north wall. The Buffalo AKG Art Museum's curator of public art, who gave his name as Aaron[*], presented a mural for the alley-facing north facade of Shea's Performing Arts Center, conceived by partners of the theater and fiscally sponsored by the museum, celebrating Buffalo-born composer Harold Arlen — “Stormy Weather,” “Over the Rainbow” — in a design that moves from the sepia of the opening of The Wizard of Oz into color. The two artists, heard as Edreys[*] and Chuck[*], last worked together on the Freedom Wall in 2016. The complication is a ghost sign for Old Spain, a restaurant that occupied the block in several iterations between 1928 and 1961, on the left side of the wall; Shea's wanted the whole wall, so the compromise is documentation — photographs before painting, and angled interpretive plaques in the planting bed below, developed with the Buffalo History Museum, telling the Old Spain story. The board asked about materials (Loxon primer, Golden mural paint, Montana acrylic spray, all in the packet), about lighting (none proposed; the board recommended it, and was told Shea's wants it too but it is “very expensive”), and about access: no boom lift fits the sunken area, so an 80-foot stick boom will reach from the upper level with eight feet of sidewalk left open, and the glazed terracotta on the building to the north will be sheeted over. Painting is planned for summer 2027, when the theater is dark — Buffalo, he said, does not paint murals after October 1 or before May 15. The project goes next to the Buffalo Arts Commission, whose approval is contingent on this one. Approved 7–0.
The Olmsted parks. Lauren Becker[*], an exhibit designer under contract to the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, brought 19 interpretive signs for Riverside, Delaware and Cazenovia parks — the first three of six — funded through a Niagara River Greenway grant that has already paid to refresh the system's monumental entry signs (teal to dark green, with a new ring-of-parks emblem) and directional signs. Two formats: 45-by-58-inch post-and-panel signs on existing posts, and low cantilever signs on the National Park Service model, posts to the side so a wheelchair can pull up, 30 inches off the ground; the fabricator is ASI on Grand Island. Content is not the board's business, the presiding member noted, but she was “pleased to see interpretive signage going in.” One member, a regular runner in the parks, asked that signs be placed far enough from plantings that a person standing behind one is visible, and offered to walk the sites. A follow-up phase of about a dozen orientation maps, if identical in form, can go to staff. Approved 7–0.
Every exterior change to a Buffalo landmark or a building in a local historic district needs one of two permissions. A certificate of appropriateness is the board's own decision after a presentation and, if it wants, conditions — Thursday's four approvals (two window jobs, the mural, the signs) were these. A certificate of no effect is issued by staff without a board vote when the work replaces or repairs what is there in kind: same material, same appearance. The 17 listed under Item 9–25 — asphalt roofs, a chimney rebuild, porch decking, First Presbyterian's slate and copper — were already issued over the summer and appear on the agenda for the record. That is why 144 Mariner (two wood windows replaced in kind with a wood-fiber polymer product) needed no vote, while 134 Mariner, across the street with 13 fiberglass windows, did.
The last 10 minutes were the paperwork step that precedes a hearing: is the application complete? The board found all three were, each 7–0, and set each for a hearing at 3 p.m. on a Thursday in October.
Public School 51, 101 Hertel Avenue. The presiding member first introduced this as a council member's submission, then corrected herself a few minutes later: the applicant is the building's private owner, working with the school; the council-member submission was the next one. The packet had the history, a site plan and historic photographs; the board looked for and found photographs of the building from all sides. “If he didn't do it right, nobody could,” a member said of the preparer.
The Nietzsche Building, 248 Allen Street. Submitted from a council member's office, this one drew the board's only quibbles: the atlas images are unclear and the exterior photographs could be sharper. A member offered to send the applicant the City's own atlas sheets and asked whether the record should be supplemented before the hearing. “All you need to determine is whether or not it contains the information necessary for you to make a review,” another said. Complete, with better photographs to follow.
The Dzimian Building, 1131 Broadway. Prepared with the board's local-landmark subcommittee, and the one the board plainly liked — “I love this one” — before a brief detour into whether the name was Polish (the room's consensus, aided by a phone, was yes, “with 50 percent probability”). Complete.
The date. On the tape, the presiding member scheduled all three hearings for October 1. The City's summary minutes record all three for Thursday, October 15. October 1 is a Thursday too. This brief reports both; the posted legal notice will govern.
Built from the City's recorded votes (agenda items file) and the summary minutes, cross-checked against the tape. Every recorded roll call is 7 yes, 0 no: Howard, Gilbert, Curry, Lander, Bryant, James, Brady. The City's record double-enters Brady's name on each vote; it is normalized here. The record marks most outcomes “-> ?” (pass/fail not stated); the motion name is the outcome. Votes on the tape were by voice, “all in favor — anyone opposed,” with no opposition heard. No recusals. Timecodes are recording positions.
Moved Gilbert, second Curry. The record lists all seven as yes and labels the motion “Closed public hearing,” an evident data-entry mislabel. On the tape the presiding member abstained — “I'm abstaining since I wasn't here. We have six, so we're good.” Flagged for the record/tape disagreement.
Moved Bryant, second Brady. No speakers for or against, in the room or online.
Moved Lander, second Curry. Owner-initiated application presented by Preservation Buffalo Niagara with an amended map (agenda attachments: PBN letter and amended-map support). Period of significance 1906–1959. Next: Common Council Legislation Committee public hearing, then full Council. Flagged as the meeting's one completed substantive action.
SHPO notice read into the record.
Communication only; the board has no jurisdiction over the demolition. SHPO Letter of Resolution executed (agenda copy dated Aug. 5, 2025) after a March 2025 SHPO finding of lost integrity. Mitigation: foundation blocks rebuilt as an entrance feature with plaque; restoration and display of the 17½-foot steel Curtiss-Wright sign; drone and photographic documentation; interpretive display; salvage of foundry molds. Board requests: consider saving or replicating the smokestack (told not feasible: acid degradation, collapsed surrounding structure, cadmium-impregnated refractory brick); more content on the plaque; design guidelines for the industrial redevelopment to follow. Flagged for civic consequence.
Moved Lander, second Brady. Condition stated in the motion: the three front windows to be the same dimensions as existing, the dividing mullions between them retained, and the frames to match the existing framed openings (not the current vinyl/aluminum capping). The applicant will revise his order accordingly.
Moved Curry, second Bryant. Front, left and right elevations; the three gable windows with muntins are not included. Preceded by a several-minute detour for an applicant at 124 Mariner, an address not on the agenda; a board member took his contact information for staff follow-up.
Moved James, second Lander. Old Spain ghost sign to be photographed and interpreted on plaques in the adjacent planting bed with the Buffalo History Museum. No lighting proposed; board recommends lighting. Painting planned summer 2027 from an 80-foot stick boom; terracotta on the neighboring building to be protected; barriers and permits through Buffalo Place. Next: Buffalo Arts Commission.
Moved Brady, second James. Post-and-panel (45″×58″) and NPS-style cantilever formats; Niagara River Greenway grant; fabricator ASI, Grand Island. Board asked that placement keep sightlines behind the panels clear of plantings. A later phase of about 12 orientation signs may be approved by staff if identical in form.
Asphalt shingle roofs in kind at 27 Mariner, 41 Elmwood, 42 Days Park, 43 Hager (repairs), 156 Butler, 175 Hughes; porch decking at 45 St. Johns Place; foundation repointing and porch/soffit/roof repairs at 98 Beverly Road; chimney reconstruction at 117 Mariner; two wood windows replaced in kind with a wood-fiber/thermoplastic polymer window at 144 Mariner; stoop and entry door at 160 Elmwood; chimney repointing, storefront glass and EPDM roof at 284 East Ferry; slate and clay tile roofs, copper work, masonry copings, gutters, stone chimney and roof framing at First Presbyterian Church, 393 Pennsylvania; roof, soffits and trim at 414 Delaware; asphalt and slate roof at 473 Virginia; asphalt and EPDM roofs at 1273 and 1277 Niagara.
The presiding member asked for anyone present on each; no one was, and no update was offered on Hospital Hill. No motion.
Moved Lander, second Curry; the record labels the vote “Approved.” Applicant is the building's private owner, not a council member as first stated on the tape. The minutes schedule the hearing for Thursday, October 15, 3 p.m.; the tape says October 1, 3 p.m. Flagged for the date discrepancy.
Moved Bryant, second Brady. Submitted from a council member's office. Board asked for clearer exterior photographs and atlas images to supplement the file before the hearing. Same date discrepancy as Item 30.
Moved Lander, second Curry. Prepared with the board's local-landmark subcommittee. Same date discrepancy.
Second by James. “Anyone opposed that wants to stay in this box?”
Where this recording came from. The Preservation Board meets in a City Hall conference room with participants joining by Webex, and its recordings are not posted on the City's CivicClerk meeting portal, where every other body's video appears within a day or two. This brief is built from the City's own Webex cloud recording, produced under a Freedom of Information Law request (FOIL 26-1096, filed August 18, answered September 25); it was transcribed September 27, twenty-four days after the meeting. For context: New York's Public Officers Law §103-a, which governs public bodies whose members participate by videoconference, requires that such meetings be recorded and that the recordings be posted on the body's website within five business days and kept available for five years. Whether any board member participated remotely on September 3 is not clear from the tape; the City's answer to the request's second part, concerning recording and retention practices, was outstanding when this brief was compiled. The recording opens about three minutes before the 3 p.m. call to order, during a microphone check, and runs to adjournment; the first two minutes and the last minute are incidental room talk.
Where the record and the tape disagree. (1) The July 23 minutes: the City's vote record shows seven yes votes; on the tape the presiding member abstained, having missed that meeting, leaving six. The record also labels that motion “Closed public hearing,” a mislabel. (2) The October hearings for Items 30–32: the tape says October 1; the summary minutes say October 15. Both are Thursdays; both are reported. (3) Item 30's applicant: introduced on the tape as a council member's submission, then corrected on the tape to a private owner; this brief follows the correction. (4) The minutes' roll call lists nine names, including Sam Gurney and Catherine Schweitzer, without marking who was present; the vote record and the tape support seven. The audio quality is poor in places — a single room microphone, a cold room, and speakers who at times could not hear one another — and this brief does not attribute individual board members' questions where the tape does not identify the speaker.
Corrections applied. Board members' names are corrected against the roster verified from the City's roll calls; the City's record enters Kevin Brady's name twice on every vote and is normalized. Proper nouns taken from the agenda over the audio: St. Casimir (heard “Casabier”), Hertel (“fertile,” “hurdle”), Nietzsche (“neat cheese”), Dzimian (“Simeon”), Cazenovia (“Chesedonia,” “Casanovia”), Buffalo AKG as the mural applicant (per the attachment titles), SHPO (“Chippo,” “ship,” “Chippewa”). Two names are supplied from context rather than the record and should be read with that in mind: Shea's for “shades” at 646 Main Street, and Harold Arlen for “Carol Barlin,” the Buffalo-born composer of “Stormy Weather” and “Over the Rainbow” named on the tape; Curtiss-Wright and Olmsted are spelled conventionally. The street check found six candidate references; its one suggested change (“Buffalo Place” to “Buffalo Skyway”) was rejected — Buffalo Place is the downtown management organization, not a street — and “Historic Place” is the National Register. The St. Casimir presenter referred to an additional parcel on a street heard three different ways; Weiss Street is on the City's index and adjoins the site, but this brief does not assert the address.
Names this brief could not verify. Applicants and their representatives appear in audio only and carry [*]: the Preservation Buffalo Niagara planner (Emily), the Northland owner's executive (Becky) and the owner entity as heard (“Buffalo Development Corporation”), the owner of 72 North Pearl (Jay Kelly), the AKG curator (Aaron), the two mural artists (Edreys, Chuck), and the Olmsted signage designer (Lauren Becker). The applicant who appeared for 124 Mariner Street and the private owner behind the Public School 51 application are not named in the record and are not named here. The board's staff planner, Chris Hawley, is named from the City's own correspondence, not the tape.
Other checks. The interests watchlist was checked against every address, applicant and entity on the docket; no match. The scanner entity database was not available to this brief; the addresses at the center of its stories are listed for the editor to check.