File:Dr. Frederick D. Gordon House, Buffalo, New York - 20220826.jpg

English: The Dr. Frederick D. Gordon House, 180 Morris Avenue at Parker Avenue, Buffalo, New York, August 2022. A paragon of the sleek Modernist style that was all the rage in the architecture of the day, the Gordon House was built in 1963 on a corner lot that had earlier been the site of the elegant Gerhard Lang residence, which had been demolished shortly after the 1936 death of its owner (a meatpacker and sometimes hotelier by trade; not to be confused with his identically named and much more famous uncle, a brewing magnate of local prominence). In particular, the prominent horizontal lines, hunkered-down massing, warm-toned color scheme, and small, deeply recessed front entrance demonstrate the long shadow cast over mid-20th century architecture by the Prairie School work of Frank Lloyd Wright. A native of Washington, D.C., Dr. Frederick Douglass Gordon (1921-1994) was a leading figure in Buffalo's African-American community of the day. He moved to the city in 1950 after a stint in the U.S. Army Dental Corps, and aside from the private dentistry practice he operated here for forty years, also served as a board member of both the ADA's Eighth District Dental Society and the Erie County Dental Society, chairman of the Humboldt Branch YMCA, and a lay minster at Lincoln Memorial Methodist Church. Although there's no direct evidence of it in contemporaneous news coverage or other historical sources, a hint of the controversy that must have ensued when an African-American family moved into a wealthy white neighborhood in what is still one of America's most heavily segregated cities, and in which restrictive covenants had formally prohibited the purchase of property by nonwhite buyers until just a few years prior, is shown by the fact that the lot was purchased from the city (to whose ownership it had reverted after the Lang House was demolished) in 1957 by a shell bidder working on behalf of an undisclosed client, and that the purchase was held up for several years on arcane technical grounds before being allowed to go through. At any rate, Dr. Gordon lived in the house until his death.