Buffalo Spree Magazine

An architect’s loft

By Barry A. Muskat,
photos by Jim Bush

The multi-use principal room of the second-floor loft is eighty feet deep. It is organized by a service core that contains mechanicals and appliances.

The kitchen island allows the homeowners
to be a part of the party when they entertain.

As part of a rich inventory of available housing stock, Buffalo still has a wealth of empty commercial buildings. Many are not necessarily located in traditional residential neighborhoods. But in a town that is experiencing a substantial upturn in development, their locations are looking better and better. These properties are ripe for imaginative, inventive, and intriguing housing solutions.

Frank Fantauzzi, an Associate Professor at the University of Buffalo’s School of Architecture, has invested in one of these structures and has slowly—but ambitiously—turned it into very cool and highly desirable living quarters.
The project isn’t complete; it’s really a work-in-progress—
indeed, a series of experiments—that will continue for many years. However, things are complete enough to see that that this piece of real estate has dramatically changed from forlorn to sensational.

Metal cutting dies that wereused by the manufacturing company now stand on end as sculptural elements.

The former home of Greene and Kellog, an early manufacturer of respirator machines, this nondescript two-story building can be found on Main Street between Ferry and Delavan. The company’s showroom was located in the mercantile space on the ground floor (currently being renovated for a future commercial tenant). The second floor was used as the company’s offices; a rear building housed the garage and some manufacturing.

Fantauzzi bought the property at auction five years ago. “We spent the first two years filling one dumpster after another,” he recalls. The space was gutted down to the shell. Tons of debris from former renovations—dropped ceilings, dividing walls, and layers of flooring—were hauled. An original tin ceiling was discovered and huge windows were exposed. At the time of purchase, the building had been empty for eight years and, per Fantauzzi, “was leaking like a sieve,” so the installation of a new state-of-the-art membrane roof became an immediate priority.

A sitting area in the master bedroom suite nestles against an original office wall. The painting is Sunflowers by Peter Dyett.

Five years later, a major and creative renovation has endowed the structure with a new life. The second floor has been converted into an airy loft whose 4,200 square feet of living space is larger than many substantial homes. It is visually stunning and architecturally innovative.

Will they pull my Spree credentials if I compare this eighty-year-old clunky commercial building to the all-glass Farnsworth House, Mies van der Rohe’s precedent-setting mid-century Modernist rectangle? I grant you that it’s a stretch from Mies’s composition—a glass box set on steel stanchions in the grassy countryside of
suburban Chicago—to Fantauzzi’s scheme
for the second floor urban revival of a
formerly ratty masonry structure.

The master bath is open yet
private. Walls are birch
and ceilings are cherry.

Yet there’s an order and rationality to both designs, the feeling that less is truly more, and a sense of lessons learned from Mies’s skin-and-bones architecture. Both use the organizing principle of a narrow service core that acts as a dividing wall. Here, a double-loaded storage wall strategically runs through the loft, containing the mechanicals and appliances while giving privacy to children’s bedrooms and bath.

Mies’s design was really the abstraction of a domestic pavilion that spawned a host of imitations. In reality, it proved to be less than practical and was greatly disliked by the patron of the commission, Edith Farnsworth. Yet, in this Main Street structure, a similar organizational concept works as a model for everyday living. There is no excess: the solutions are elegant and the lines are clean. The patron is the architect, who sees his home as an experimental space and an educational opportunity. “Did everything work as we hoped?” Fantauzzi rhetorically asks, as he notes, “When you build for yourself, there’s a real opportunity for post-occupancy evaluation—we get to live with it, to see what works, to keep on learning.”

Children’s bedrooms—the dividing
wall offers privacy and storage.

The nature of an architectural practice usually requires the designer and client to make all choices in advance, due to the requirements of scheduling, materials, and economics. Fantauzzi notes that the advantage of an architect building for himself is the ability to make decisions on the fly. A freestanding fireplace was ready for installation at the time I visited. It was a design-in-progress for a focal point that floats between floor and ceiling. It was to be clad with four large steel panels, mounted with a gap that will read as a cruciform with exposed fasteners. “I will decide on the details as I go,” notes Fantauzzi, pleased with the luxury of having flexibility as he builds.

The remnants of two original skylights remain. With twenty years of neglect needing attention, their replacement is on the back burner. Fantauzzi thinks one will provide an ideal
location for a staircase to the flat roof and
future roof garden.

The children’s bath is light and airy by virtue of a floor-to-ceiling sliding door. A cluster of inexpensive medicine cabinets forms a mirrored wall.

Despite water damage and years of neglect, it was still possible to sand and restore the floors, which were literally black with grime. The original maple woods now gleam under coats of polyurethane. Fortuitously, a section that was not salvageable is located near the entry and will be covered with slate or a natural stone.

One original wall that was saved probably divided some offices near the front of the building. Its original wainscoting and opaque glass panels remain, now delineating the master bedroom area. The room is formed by the sharp angle of building’s façade as it follows the streetscape of Main Street’s bend at Ferry Street. The result gives the area an interesting geometry and its large windows flood the space with light.

Eleven-foot ceilings run through the apartment—any new dividing walls are low barriers so that the space appears open and continuous. With the exception of the loft’s front and rear entry doors, few actual doors are used in the entire loft. By employing a series of turns, the master bathroom is intriguingly both open and private. In the bedroom suite’s room-without-walls, areas are defined by tall units that act as armoires and closets. These wardrobes are built of natural maple, the same material used in the organizing wall of the main room.

The bedroom/bathroom walls are paneled in birch, in a clever system that adds texture and warmth. Fantauzzi sees it “like cloth with a nap to it.” The simplicity of the birch panels is accented by the pattern of screws that hold the pieces in place. Their function becomes the ornament in the rhythm of the design.

Natural cherry is used to trim bathroom ceilings and several walls. The material is actually ready-made strips of wood flooring. Instead of showing the finished front side, the boards are installed on the reverse to reveal the wood’s linear grooves and texture.

The border of the property is now defined by the panels of a galvanized sheet metal wall. It will be a great backdrop to a future urban garden.

Industrial heritage

Three tall cylinders stand in a cluster as sculptural elements. These interesting industrial forms were found in the basement, and once incorporated the metal cutting-dies that Greene & Kellogg employed in manufacturing their own cardboard boxes to package their product. The forms now stand on-end as sculptural elements.

Nearby stands another interesting wooden form, wider at its base and tapering to a point, and resembling a ramp standing on-end. According to Fantauzzi, it was a ramp (leading from the rear of the building) that the construction crew used throughout the entire renovation. Now that it is an art object, it brings the history of the building into the context of its contemporary use. On the wall, the bright colors of Peter Dyett’s large acrylic offer a refreshing contrast.

A new exterior garden wall now defines the border of the property. Although it currently edges gravel and asphalt, one can picture future landscaping. The wall itself was a student thesis project. “We needed a system that would be accurate enough to be straight over a run of 160 feet,” says Fantauzzi. The lower courses are poured concrete and the wall is folded galvanized sheet metal (four- and-a-half-foot horizontal panels that are pop-riveted). It is sturdy enough to withstand the impact of a car from a neighboring driveway, and its subtle sheen will be a great backdrop to an urban garden.

An element of the design that many won’t notice is a simple ladder mounted against an interior wall. Set in a steel track to make it retractable, it affords the only access to the roof. Tight to the wall, its base may be slid into position when needed. Made of inexpensive rolled steel, it is uniquely constructed without welding. Dowels form the rungs, which are then drilled and held in place by smaller dowels, anchored with a tiny set-screw at the end of each rung. It’s a clever piece of contemporary utilitarian design.

The former Greene & Kellog building on Main Street was empty for years and provides a great shell for imaginative redevelopment.

To the rear of the second-floor level, a masonry bridge connects the living quarters to the garage/studio/shop.(Fantauzzi envisions replacing the original structure with a glass bridge “to allow the user to experience the crossing.”) The remote location of the shop allows the use of power tools without disturbing the family.

In addition to being an architect, Fantauzzi is an artisan and visionary. He directed the multidisciplinary Bronze Book Project, a massive piece of public art in the form of a sculptural book. A compendium of Buffalo’s history, the team created low-relief castings of significant buildings and sites in a striking piece of work. It was displayed at the Buffalo Airport and may currently be viewed at the University’s Capen Hall.

In discussing his work, Fantauzzi says that he tries to avoid typical building systems, and attempts “to revisit the questions of why we build and what materials we use.” In this renovation of his own living space, he’s used unprocessed, natural materials, “materials that get better over time, that age well, and that feel nice to the touch.” As the images accompanying this article demonstrate, Fantauzzi has also created an equally pleasurable—and compelling—visual experience.

Barry Muskat is Buffalo Spree’s architecture critic and frequent contributor. He sits on the Buffalo Preservation Board and is keenly interested in the adaptive reuse of our existing building stock.

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