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Linwood Avenue Table of Contents Henry Crane
House
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TEXT Beneath Illustrations
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The embedded tower pierces the roof |
The great sloping roof is punctured by a massive tower with a reverse roof. |
Front windows are not original |
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Palladian window on the third floor. |
Porte-cochere joins front porch |
Battered foundations |
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Orange S-curves on right side |
Shingles form a continuous covering |
Elaborate carriage house in rear |
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The enclosed rear side may be an addition |
Photo by C. D.
Arnold |
Architect
The design has been attributed to Joseph Lyman Silsbee of Silsbee & Marling Architects, but even that attribution is not without dispute. Silsbee began his career in Syracuse and eventually had offices in Buffalo and Chicago, where he was Frank Lloyd Wright’s first employer.After the Silsbee & Marling partnership broke up in 1887, by which time Silsbee was in Chicago, James H. Marling, in partnership with Herbert C. Burdett, a former apprentice to H. H. Richardson, claimed the Crane House as his design. It is felt by some scholars, however, that a Silsbee-Marling collaboration was likely.
According to a study by Christopher Payne in Western New York Heritage magazine, some motifs present on this house suggest Silsbee’s hand in the design: "the exotic roof form, the simplified massing of the home, creating a monolithic structure that seems to grow out of the earth"; the long open porch (now filled in) extending beyond the main body of the house to form a porte-cochere; the exaggerated Palladian window in the side gable, framed by swirling ornament (“The Buffalo Architectural Legacy of J. L. Silsbee,” Winter 2002, p. 19)
Fassett died in the house in 1908 of a heart attack while he was sleeping.
His business career made him one of the leading lumber dealers in an area that once led the world in lumber exports, and at the time of his death he was the senior partner in the firm that had taken over and developed the lumber industry on Tonawanda Island.
Fassett was also an officer in several early telephone companies.
Sources:
- Source: Summer 1999 Preservation Coalition tour of Linwood Avenue. Tim Tielman, tour guide.
- October 2000 Graycliff Conservancy tour of four Silsbee houses. John Conlin, tour guide.
- Research by Christopher Payne and Martin Wachadlo
- Information on Theodore S. Fassett: "A History of the City of Buffalo: Its Men and Institutions," pub. in 1908 by the Buffalo Evening News.
- "A Field Guide to American Architecture," by Carole Rifkind, 1980
- "2008 Linwood Tour of Homes," text by Ramona Whitaker
