Modern Housing for Buffalo
By Jessie Fisher
The Commodore Perry Homes on Buffalo’s East Side, ca. 1950. Insets: Cover of the MoMA exhibition catalog and an interior view of one of Buffalo’s public housing units.Credit- Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and MoMA
In the first half of the 20th century, modern art and architecture developed in tandem and were promoted by many of the same voices. They were tied together most formally in 1932, when the Museum of Modern Art, led by the director of the museum’s architecture department, Philip Johnson, hosted its first architecture exhibition with the goal of promoting largely European architectural aesthetics to an American audience. In addition to focusing on celebrated high-style homes and buildings designed for wealthy patrons, the MoMA exhibition included an entire section on European designs for housing, much of it designed to be lower-cost, affordable housing. The inclusion of this housing section would go on to have a major influence on the nascent public housing movement in the United States, most especially in Buffalo, NY.
The housing section of the MoMA exhibition was curated by Lewis Mumford with a huge amount of behind-the-scenes assistance from Catherine Bauer. Nearly all the ideals showcased would find their way into the design manuals being put out by the newly formed Housing Division of the Public Works Administration and used to guide the work of local housing agencies, including the Buffalo Municipal Housing Agency.
It was striking for an institution generally considered a part of the artistic avant-garde to zero in on “the problem of housing” in America, and specifically with the issue of building high-quality, low-cost homes for those in the lowest income groups. In fact, the curators and supporters of this exhibition were quite explicit in their activist goals for including public housing so prominently in the show. Even prior to the Great Depression, which was at its height when the exhibition was being planned and shown, many of the architects and activists involved had been grappling with the ways that the increasingly urban cities of American were growing. They felt that the “old ways” of building were not worthy of the “finer possibilities offered by our present age.”
Believe it or not, much of the housing in America at that time lacked the new modern conveniences that were being developed: central heating, indoor plumbing, electric lights. Even things that, on the surface, may not seem like extravagances, such as privacy and adequate light and ventilation in every room, were lacking in the vast majority of dwellings. There was also a strong feeling among designers and theorists that, due to the largely unregulated private and speculative nature of housing development in the United States, opportunities to include public amenities such as parks and schools, as well as to provide separation between housing and more noxious uses such as industry and agriculture, were lacking to the detriment of both types of users. Further, because virtually all housing development in America was private and profit-motivated, at least one-third of all families could not afford even basic shelter. Thus, overcrowding was rampant in many neighborhoods, even prior to the start of the Great Depression.
In the 1930s in the City of Buffalo, for instance, the BMHA’s studies showed that housing quality was wildly uneven from neighborhood to neighborhood. While many Buffalonians lived on tree-lined streets in architect-designed homes that included all of the “modern” conveniences, in the census tracts selected for “slum clearance” and new housing, up to 25 percent of units had no indoor water closets, and nearly 80 percent lacked any kind of indoor shower or bath facilities. Taken as an average, only 14 percent of Buffalo families lacked indoor hot running water, however, in the areas targeted by the BMHA for replacement, this number was up to 76 percent. In these same areas, more than half the homes lacked central heat or modern cooking devices. These neighborhoods suffered from both high levels of vacancies and high levels of over-crowding, as families doubled and tripled up in order to share the cost of unaffordable rent for sub-standard dwellings. This same set of circumstances played out in many cities across the country, exacerbated, but certainly not created, by the Great Depression.
Thus, even before the Depression, many architects and theorists were turning to Europe to think about new ways to design and provide housing. Europe was busy rebuilding from the destruction of World War I and, in a quest to build as many units for as many displaced families as quickly and cheaply as possible, was providing housing through state-planned and financed ventures, while experimenting with different types of multi-family living. It was these multi-family, subsidized housing developments that the MoMA’s curators sought to bring to the attention of American architects, policy makers, politicians and people.
Employing models, large-scale plans, aerial photography and large-scale text panels to make their points, the curators promoted an overall design aesthetic that relied on several key points:
- Large-scale planning. Before even beginning to construct any individual building, these designers believed the larger neighborhood must be laid out and public amenities such as parks, pools, playgrounds, schools and neighborhood commerce planned in advance. Particular attention was paid to keeping cars and pedestrians separated, and to giving children and their caregivers ways to get to the various neighborhood amenities without having to interact with vehicular traffic.
- Low-rise, attached housing surrounded by ample greenspace. Rejecting both high-rise apartments as well as single-family homes, these designers were proponents of what we would currently refer to as “gentle density.” Utilizing attached town homes and low-rise apartment styles allowed each site to accommodate more people than had typically lived on each site before, however, each unit had direct access to ample greenspace and amenities.
- Light and ventilation. It was during this time that building codes began requiring that all bedrooms have direct access to light and ventilation, which had not necessarily been standard practice in the way that cities were growing under private speculation.
- Modern amenities. Things that we take for granted today—central heating, indoor hot and cold running water, indoor toilets, modern cook stoves and refrigerators—were lacking in most lower-rent, privately developed and owned apartments. In the new, modern housing developments, these amenities were considered necessary for ensuring the dignity of all people. By taking speculation and profit-seeking out of the equation, the publicly produced units of Europe were able to ensure that even the lowest-rent projects included such amenities.
The Exhibit Hits the Road
As a travelling exhibition, the reach of the 1932 show went well beyond New York City, with Buffalo’s Fine Arts Academy hosting it at the Albright Gallery, first under the direction of William Hekking and subsequently overseen by Gordon Washburn. The Albright was one of the original six subscribers to the travelling exhibition, providing much needed funding to complete a show that may not have been possible without their support. In addition, Mr. Hekking travelled to New York in 1931 to advise Philip Johnson on the proper way to store and ship the models and other exhibition materials.
When the Modern Architecture exhibition made its way to Buffalo in the fall of 1932, Gordon Washburn reached out to Duane Lyman, noted local architect, to assist in publicizing the event, which continued to be pitched as of interest to a larger audience than might ordinarily be attracted to modern art. In requesting that Mr. Lyman participate in a radio address aired on WKBW and in connection with a photo pictorial in the Courier-Express, Director Washburn noted: “It is one of the most stimulating exhibitions which has been brought together, which perhaps you know. The comment caused in New York was violent and, on the whole, favorable. But even if people don’t like the material, it at least stimulates thought, which I suppose, is the most that can be expected of a good exhibition.”
It seems highly likely that the exhibition did stimulate thought locally, as the four public housing projects built in Buffalo in the seven years following the Modern Architecture exhibition very closely mirrored the design and planning ideals that were being showcased in the exhibition. This is especially likely given the high esteem in which Mr. Lyman was held by his fellow architects, notably those who would go on to design Buffalo’s early modern housing projects. In the inter-war period, Buffalo built nearly 7,000 units of public housing following the European ideals promulgated in the MoMA exhibition.
Public Housing in Buffalo
Buffalo was an early adopter of public housing. Once the National Industrial Recovery Act was signed by President Roosevelt in 1933, plans were underway in Buffalo. The Buffalo Municipal Housing Agency was established in 1934 to provide planning documents to the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works the following year. The Authority’s first project – Kenfield – was completed in 1937, with three more projects coming to fruition by the end of the decade: Willert Park Courts, the Commodore Perry Projects and Lakeview.
An examination of the early Buffalo projects shows that they were far from being throw-away architecture, as our present-day prejudices against public housing might lead us to assume. Instead, they were heavily influenced by design and planning ideas stemming from the highest levels of design thought, as embodied in the 1932 Modern Architecture exhibition. Perry and Lakeview were designed by the firm of one of Buffalo’s most celebrated local architects, E.B. Green, while Willert Park Courts would include an incredibly robust art program, the likes of which hadn’t been seen outside of New York City.
In its initial study on the need for a public housing program in Buffalo and looking at where to site the needed projects, the BMHA included a section of “architectural sketches” intended to give a design vocabulary to what would eventually be built. This design work was done by noted local architect Chester Oakley. It is important to keep in mind that, in its initial phases, and as conceived by the designers and activists advocating for public housing in the United States, such projects were not thought of as only being designed for the poorest among us. In the midst of the Depression, they were certainly triaging potential recipients of the newly produced housing and prioritizing military industry workers and those without adequate shelter. But their overall design intent was to build housing and communities that anyone would choose to live in once the emergencies of war and economic privation were over.
Designed by Chester Oakley, celebrated today primarily for his contributions to local ecclesiastical architecture, Kenfield was built on a vacant parcel of land in the northeast section of Buffalo purchased by the Federal Government for ten cents per square foot. Kenfield closely followed the design aesthetic laid out in the MoMA exhibition, with its two-story town homes and three-story apartment houses, all designed around spacious courtyards with amenities, including 24 playgrounds and two social centers with fully equipped kitchens and nursery schools. Car traffic was banished to the periphery of the site.
Kenfield, near the border with Cheektowaga, was the first of Buffalo’s housing projects, and was completed in September 1937.Credit- Buffalo State University Butler Library Archives
Lakeview was a 20-acre site adjacent to downtown, Centennial (later LaSalle and now Ralph Wilson Centennial) Park and the mouth of the Niagara River. While nearly half of the land acquired was vacant land already owned by the City of Buffalo, the rest of the site contained abandoned industrial properties and 45 residential properties occupied by 44 families. The new housing was again comprised of handsome brick, two-story town homes and three-story apartment buildings. Like Kenfield, many site amenities were integrated into the site, including a large auditorium, a wading pool for small children (it was expected older kids could use the larger pool in Centennial Park), kitchen facilities and a large auditorium.
Willert Park Courts was built next, taking its name from the city park and playground located immediately adjacent to the site. Frederick C. Bachus, a well-known local architect, designed a project that included the demolition of 62 “dilapidated” structures housing 115 families to make way for the 10 new brick buildings—two-story townhomes and three-story apartment buildings—housing 172 families. Built exclusively for Black families, due to Federal policies on neighborhood segregation and local opposition to integrating the other public housing sites, Willert Park was the smallest of the four early projects. Still, it contained all of the same amenities as the other sites, including play yards, communal kitchens, a nursery school, a men’s club furnished by the YMCA and club rooms available to scouting groups and other community organizations. Willert Park was also the only one of the BMHA’s projects to feature an extensive public art component, created by well-respected sculptors Harold Ambellen and Robert Cronbach.
Finally, the largest of the early new housing projects was completed in 1940. The Commodore Perry Homes were located on a 21.5-acre parcel that formerly contained 350 dwelling units housing 309 families. Once again, the new structures were comprised of either two-story town homes or three-story apartment buildings, designed in a handsome red brick by the firm of Green and James. Like the other projects, the Commodore Perry Homes aligned with the vision espoused by architects working to popularize the design ideas behind the Modern Housing movement. So, while the new project housed more than three times the number of people originally residing on the site, nearly a quarter of the land was left open for play spaces, sitting areas and gardens, while space for multiple nursery schools, clubs and other shared spaces were integrated throughout the site.
Each of these early Buffalo housing projects, at the direction of their highly respected architects, sought to incorporate the ideals promulgated by the MoMA exhibition. Clearly, it was never the intention of the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority to simply slap up poor-quality housing of the lowest denominator, though there were those who proposed just that. For example, local architect John J. Wade, who had recently risen to prominence as the designer of the brand-new City Hall, roundly criticized the “palaces” that were being built for “slum dwellers,” and put forth his own designs that would provide neither central heat nor even interior doors.
But the BMHA stayed true to the vision of creating high-quality, high-design spaces for its residents. This is evident in how closely each of the projects adhered to the standards set in Europe and promoted by the Museum of Modern Art, as well is in the careful selection of well-known, prominent architects who were up to the task. Lower quality proposals were made, but they were rejected.
The focus on the importance of public housing and its architecture, and the avant-garde/Buffalo connection, remained clearly visible in 1940. In that year, Henry-Russell Hitchcock, one of Johnson’s chief collaborators in the 1932 MOMA exhibition, visited Western New York to create a Buffalo-centric architecture exhibition for the Albright Art Gallery (now the AKG Museum), still under the direction of Gordon Washburn. Specifically seeking to include a public housing example within the buildings he would single out, as part of his research for the show he wrote to the Federal Works Agency/Works Project Administration of New York State, requesting a list of the public housing projects that had been constructed in Buffalo. In the end, he elected to include Willert Park Courts as a model development. In his description of that particular project, he noted that “Certain elements, the shelter at the entrance, the syncopated ranges of horizontal windows at the stairwell, are remarkably well studied.”
Willert Park would be one of only 27 buildings Hitchcock deemed important enough to include in the 1900-1940 section of his exhibition. Other buildings selected for this time period included each of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo commissions, Buffalo City Hall, the Albright Art Gallery and the Saskatchewan Pool Elevator. The following year, Willert Park Courts would also be considered important enough by the MoMA for inclusion—with only eight other Buffalo sites—in its Guide to Modern Architecture: Northeast States. Other local sites included such notable buildings as Kleinhan’s Music Hall, W.T. Grant’s downtown department store and each of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo commissions.
Far from being a piece of throw-away architecture that one’s current prejudices might suggest for housing poor Black folks in Buffalo, Willert Park Courts was an expertly crafted bit of modern architecture. It was lovingly cared for by its residents and is currently deemed eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, although the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority has refused to have it listed.
It is important to re-visit this history now, as one of Buffalo’s early modern housing projects (Lakeview) has been demolished, and two more (Willert Park Courts and the Perry Projects) are slated for demolition by the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority. Before these sites are lost, we need to understand, as a community, their history and worth, and to consider whether, like so many other architectural treasures that were nearly lost to the wrecking ball, they too have a place in the Buffalo of the future.
Author Bio
Jessie Fisher is an urban planner from Buffalo who currently serves as the executive director of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Martin House. “Modern Housing for Buffalo” is supported by Independent Projects, a partnership program of the New York State Council on the Arts and The Architectural League of New York State. Independent Projects grants are made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
