Trinity Place

Trinity Place, a pleasant side street, is lined with the sort of Queen Anne double-porched duplexes built in the 1920's which can be seen on many streets on Buffalo's West Side. Nonetheless, it harbors three residential buildings the likes of which is duplicated nowhere else in Buffalo.

The freestanding townhouses at Nos. 56 and 58 Trinity stood virtually alone on the eastern end of the street for many years. Typical of the narrow, vertical townhouses built in other cities to take advantage of narrow lots, the style never caught on in Buffalo, where land was abundant and cheap. The buildings have a unique presence in Buffalo as a result. No. 56 was built in 1869 in the Italianate style, and No. 58 a year later in the "new" Second Empire style.

At the bend in the street is a house straight out of an old Hollywood screen play, a one-storey Spanish Colonial Revival structure graced with italianate influences, built in 1930. The roof is hipped, and covered in concrete-based tiles. Fluted brackets interrupt the roof-line frieze which repeats a floral motif. A round arched entranceway protects recessed, like-arched double doors. Front windows repeat the round arch, the surround windows having fan-like upper sashes. Corner pilasters are decorated with bud motifs beneath the capitals and roman heads in profile at their bases. Standing by the gate it is possible to feel that, if you wait long enough, Bette Davis might emerge, young again, or perhaps Tyrone Power, or even Zorro him-self, off to a mission to right the world's ills.