File:Berrick & Sons Demonstration Homes Historic District, Buffalo, New York - 20220813.jpg

English: The Berrick & Sons Demonstration Homes Historic District, 84-102 Florida Street, Buffalo, New York, August 2022. Buffalo's newest (as of when this photo was taken) locally listed historic district, the Berrick Homes comprise a row of seven nearly identical three-unit houses (differing only in the exact composition of their façades and various minor decorative details) along the north side of Florida Street in the city's East Side neighborhood of Hamlin Park. Marketed to the lower middle class primarily, the homes were built in 1901 by the contracting firm of Charles Berrick & Sons to plans by the prolific local architect George Metzger, who here applies a simplified version of the Queen Anne style that was popular in the era and especially so in homes like this, whose standardized design and focus on balancing quality of construction with affordability gives them much in common with the working-class "two-flats" or "Buffalo doubles" that were beginning to appear around the same time, though it bears mentioning that the latter were invariably of wood-frame construction rather than masonry, and were assembled from prefabricated modular elements whereas the Berrick Homes were built fully onsite. Each house is two and a half stories in height (each story comprising a unit, originally including the no-longer-occupied attics which are accessible only via a rear stairway), with front-gable roofs projecting outward from the lower stories and sporting raking dentil rows under the eaves, second floors with spacious balconies and slightly projecting semihexagonal bay windows, and at street level a semi-enclosed front porch where modest Classical detailing comes in the form of pairs and trios of Doric pillars (those depicted here are modern reconstructions, though built following the original blueprints). The homes were most recently owned by the nearby Canisius College, who purchased the buildings in the mid-1990s but never followed through on their plans to convert them to student housing. In 2020, after contracting enrollment had placed the school in a rather more precarious financial position, Canisius sold them to Severyn Development, who is currently wrapping up renovations and preparing to market the 14 residential apartments the buildings now comprise between them.