208 North Street

April 2007

Known as the Granger Mansion, this home was designed by the architectural firm of Green and Wicks.  In 1885 the Real Estate and Builders' Monthly praised the ‘sumptuous hardwood interiors and artistic furniture' of this formidable house.  Oak was used for the walls and ceilings of the vestibule and mahogany served to panel the reception room.  A large stained‑glass window by the Treadwell Studios of Boston graced the landing of the elaborate oak staircase.

The house is one of the earliest Green & Wicks designs, one of Buffalo’s most successful architectural firms.  It is also an excellent example of the Queen Anne style.  Green and Wicks made use of the four grotesque brackets that, while popular in the 1880s, never caught on as a popular mode of housing decoration in Buffalo.  A hipped and slated roof defines the imposing and stern proportions of the house which has a character far removed from the gaiety usually identified by the Queen Anne style.  Rusticated stone lintels surround the first and second story transomed windows.  Two beautifully paneled and corbelled chimney stacks define the upward movement of the design.

The interior woodwork was from the designs of Bergen Bark, a Swedish immigrant who had studied in Berlin and Paris before working for several years with Leopold Eidlitz in New York City.  In the 1880s Bark settled in Buffalo, where he took charge of creating designs for the woodworking firm of Metz, Bark and Myer.  The Granger house, which is one of Green and Wicks's first works in the city, is representative of many large dwellings in Buffalo from the 1880s and 1890s.

The first owner of this home, Edmund Granger (1832-1897) was in the wholesale grocery business.  The wholesale grocery house of Granger and Company corner of Broadway and Ellicott Street was founded in 1853.  Mrs. Granger continued to live in the mansion after Mr. Granger’s death.  After the turn of the 20^th century, the house was modified because of the widening of Elmwood Avenue.  The front porch was redesigned and the interior changed.  The house was not ordinally right on the sidewalk - when Elmwood Avenue was widened, a portion of the original house was removed.  Fortunately, the house was redesigned by the capable architectural firm of Esenwein & Johnson about 1910.