History

Buffalo’s decision to build a new city hall in the late 1920s was an expression of civic confidence at a moment when the city’s industrial and commercial standing made it one of the largest in the United States. The site at Niagara Square — the circular terminus of Main Street, from which radial avenues fan out through the street grid — had been laid out by Joseph Ellicott in his 1804 plan for Buffalo. The choice to place the new City Hall here, at the geometric heart of Ellicott’s plan, was both a practical and a symbolic decision: it anchored the seat of government at the civic focal point of the original urban design.

The architects Dietel, Wade & Jones designed a building whose Art Deco programme is among the richest of any American city hall. The polychrome terracotta panels — in blue, gold, and grey-green tones — cover the upper floors of the tower with a dense programme of relief ornament: stylised foliate forms, geometric interlace, and figural sculptures representing the history and industries of Buffalo (grain, steel, shipping). The main entrance sequence, with its carved stone reliefs and bronze doors, is a set piece of civic Art Deco design on the level of the greatest government buildings of the period.

The building opened in 1931 and has functioned without interruption as the seat of Buffalo city government. It survived the 20th-century reversals of Buffalo’s industrial economy — the steel industry’s decline, the loss of the Erie Canal trade — that emptied many of the surrounding downtown buildings. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975, it is one of the anchors of Buffalo’s argument for its place among the great Art Deco cities of North America.