File:Honeywell Buffalo Research Laboratories - fmr National Aniline Chemical Research Center - Buffalo, New York - 20221210.jpg

English: Honeywell Buffalo Research Laboratories, 338-340 Elk Street at Peabody Street, Buffalo, New York, December 2022. One of, if not the largest commission ever undertaken by the local architectural practice of Shelgren & Whitman, this $2.8 million chemical research facility boasts a design whose sleek, streamlined Modernism is very typical of the era in which it was constructed but decidedly atypical of the firm's output at the time, the majority of which consisted of churches designed in Colonial Revival and other traditionalist aesthetics. The smooth-textured façade, preponderance of right angles, low-to-the-ground massing, uniform horizontal rows of large windows, and relative lack of ornamentation are all telltale signifiers of the so-called International Style. The interior design, too, reflects the industry's forward-looking focus: the lobby was originally furnished in a combination of Italian red granite, terrazzo flooring and stainless steel, with an engraved steel frieze circumnavigating the space that depicted symbolic elements of the engineering art and profession. Meanwhile, pastel shades predominated in the workspaces, and the roof was regularly flooded with water during summertime to help deter solar absorption for climate control purposes. The facility was built in two stages: the first (left background) was a two-story engineering center where, as contemporaneous news coverage put it, "200 to 300 engineers and technical men... work[ed] on new processes and designs for equipment" and was constructed from 1953-1954, while the larger three-story chemical research center (center to right, foreground), connected to the former by a breezeway, was inaugurated the following year. Founded in 1917 as a merger of three companies (one the Buffalo-based Schoellkopf Chemical) effected in order to break Imperial Germany's near-monopoly on coal tar products, National Aniline became three years later a subsidiary of the Boston-based Allied Chemical and Dye, and its purview gradually expanded into a wide range of other chemical products such as detergents, textile dyes, food additives, and - during the Second World War - anti-malaria medications. The facility continues in operation today under the ownership of successor company Honeywell International.