File:Charles and Rose Waldrow House, Buffalo, New York - 20201229.jpg

English: The Charles and Rose Waldrow House, 3404 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, December 2020. Compared to other cities with milder climates, Mediterranean Revival architecture is not particularly well attested in Buffalo. One of the few places to see such buildings in significant concentration is University Heights, the district at the far northeast corner of the city that was being built out in the decade or so after the end of World War I, when the style was at the height of its popularity. Broadly speaking, Mediterranean architecture comes in two strains - Italian and Spanish - and here you see a heady hybridization of the typical features of both: the façade of sandy-yellow brick and red terra cotta tiles for the roof evokes the former, the airy loggia framing the front entrance and the relatively minimalist ornamentation signals the latter, and the decorative ironwork (most prominently visible in the balconet below the second-story windows) and profusion of arches are common to both. The house was erected in 1927 for Charles Julius Waldrow (1866-1930) and his wife Rose (1870-1945), of the Buffalo Plumbing Supply Company. Their story is an interesting one: Rose first turns up in the records as the wife of saloonkeeper William Heber on Clinton Street, who died in 1900, leaving her with two young sons, Joseph and George, to care for. Meanwhile, Charles was employed by (and later partners with) his younger brother, Otto, a plumber whose shop was on Fillmore Avenue near Broadway and who lived across the street from Rose. It appears that Charles and Rose began cohabiting stealthily shortly after her husband's death - the home address at which Charles is listed by most contemporaneous city directories is the same as that of the business, yet the 1905 state census records him as residing with Rose as a boarder and gives his occupation as "bartender". The two married in 1910, and initially the marriage seems to have been tumultuous: according to a November 1919 report in the Buffalo Courier, Rose had filed for legal separation on grounds of spousal abandonment, while Charles, who'd moved in with his brother temporarily, accused her and her two sons of conspiring to wrest away control of his business. They eventually reconciled, and by the time this house was built, the family had grown wealthy, having made extremely successful real estate investments in nearby Eggertsville, which at the time was beginning to develop into an exclusive upper-class suburb. Moreover, Rose had indeed ascended to the post of president of the company, with her sons George and Joseph also serving important executive roles (co-president and treasurer, respectively) and living in fine homes of their own situated just around the corner (at numbers 2 and 8 Allenhurst Road, respectively). As for 3404 Main, Charles and Rose continued living there until their respective deaths. The house has served as medical offices for some time now, most recently those of chiropractor Steven Caprow, whose practice has been located in the building since 2017.