File:Saigon Cafe - fmr Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, Fanny Farmer Candy Shop et al. - Buffalo, New York - 20210424.jpg

English: Saigon Cafe, 520 Elmwood Avenue at West Utica Street, Buffalo, New York, April 2021. One of the several purpose-built commercial buildings that are peppered between the usual examples of houses converted for commercial use that prevail on the Elmwood Avenue commercial strip, 520 Elmwood distinguishes itself with the unusual quantity and quality of its Neoclassical detailing: monumental fluted Ionic pilaster strips adorn the terra cotta façade at regular intervals, interspersed on the second floor with trios of windows; a parapet, cornice, and dentil row define the roofline; medallion reliefs decorate the frieze. Sadly, the pedimented main entrance facing Elmwood Avenue has been lost to subsequent alterations (it would have been behind the streetlight pole from the perspective of this photograph). Since its construction in 1925, the building has always housed an assortment of retail tenants on the ground floor and apartments above; the former originally included as anchor tenant a branch location of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, one of the few in the city at the time that included a meat counter as well as packaged groceries. A&P remained in business at this location until 1929. By far the building's longest tenured retail tenant was Fanny Farmer Candies, a branch of which was located there from the late 1930s through the late '70s. More recently it has seen use as a restaurant: a pair of French bistros, Le Metro and Mode, operated there in succession from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s, and since 2014 it's been home to Saigon Cafe, the Elmwood Village's longest-standing purveyor of Thai and Vietnamese cuisine.