60 Arlington Place

April 2007

The charming gothic cottage at 60 Arlington is the pride and joy of Arlington Park. Although some sources place the construction of this house in the 1850s, the most reliable sources of information place its construction around 1867. Richard Heath, who is credited with building the house, was listed as living here from 1868 onward. Mr. Heath moved to this house from 26 Park Street. H. J. Hall is listed as living here in the 1880s as was Edward P. Field. Another source places ownership of this house in the 1880s with R. R. Baker, who dealt with installment goods and subscription books.

This house is architecturally important.  A guidebook to Buffalo architecture highlights the historical importance of the house: “This charming house is the best example in Buffalo of the Gothic revival cottages that began to appear in rural and suburban America in the 1840s. Forever associated with Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852), who wrote much about domestic architecture and landscape gardening (and who numbered Lewis Allen among his correspondents), the board and batten cottage, trimmed with verge boards along the eaves and molded labels above the windows, was an attempt to adapt the decorative features and upright proportions of Gothic architecture to the modern dwelling. Furthermore, the vertical boarding of the exterior walls was regarded by Downing and his followers as a more honest expression of the underlying structural frame than was the traditional horizontal clapboarding. The delicately carved porch on this house, with its elaborately turned posts and reflections of Japanese taste, is a later addition, probably dating from the 1880s.”

Other existing works have commented on 60 Arlington including The Allentown Association, which adds: “At number 60 Arlington you will find yourself looking at the most unlikely and wonderful single residence in the City of Buffalo. Built in the 1850's by Richard Heath, a stair builder by trade, the original structure is a twostorey Gothic Revival building of board-andbatten construction. First and second-storey windows are crowned by label-moulded brows beneath a steeply pitched gable roof. There are a handful of board-andbatten constructions left in the city, and this house is believed to be the only remaining residential example.”

“Sometime in the 1880s one Jane Heath, who also owned the Italianate house next door at number 58 Arlington, added a porch to her home. What a porch it is! A string-moulded verge board drips like rich icing from the eaves of the roof. A modillonbracketed pediment incorporates an elaborate cut-out of twelve-spoke mandalas flying over a pattern-spool frieze interrupted by cut-out panels in an Alte Deutsche motif. Elaborately turned spindle posts are bracketed to the porch roof by jigsaw-cut brackets in a complex foliate design. The Stick-design balustrade recalls Chinese Chippendale fretwork. The ringand-vase spindle turnings of the 17th century furniture are aped in the cut-out panels that cover the porch’s base. The rich pastiche of cultural symbols and stylistic conceits has somehow made a perfect marriage with this exemplar of American Gothic. Miss Heath apparently liked her front porch so much that she had it copied some years later on number 58.”