File:Evans-Chisholm House, Buffalo, New York - 20220207.jpg

English: The Evans-Chisholm House, 100 Meadow Road, Buffalo, New York, February 2022. Here we witness local architect Frederick C. Backus - who in 1928 had recently resigned his post as city architect to establish his own practice, and would later help to pioneer the revolutionary Modernist aesthetic on the local level as senior partner in the firm of Backus, Crane & Love - kicking up his heels and crafting a whimsical, freewheeling design that's rooted in the Spanish Colonial Revival yet incorporates an eclectic grab bag of other influences too. Notice the contrast between the more staidly conceived main portion of the house to the right - with the requisite arched windows and doors, decorative ironwork, and a sandstone surround that frames the entrance while accentuating the smooth pale-yellow (originally salmon pink) stucco of the façade - with the stubby tower to its south, connected by a flying passage over the driveway. The design pays homage to the original owner's affinity for Spanish, Mexican, and Indigenous American art, and those influences continue into the interior, with the hexagon-coffered ceiling in the dining room, elegant wrought-iron chandelier in the tower, and warm-toned wood paneling throughout. That original owner was John Ganson Evans (1902-1978), a scion of the Ganson family (one of the wealthiest and most prominent in Gilded Age Buffalo) who was only 26 years old when he and his family moved in. Evans only lived in the house for a short time: he moved in 1931 to Maine, where he went on to distinguish himself both as a writer of romantic fiction (he published Andrew's Harvest and Shadows Flying, aka Love in the Shadows, in 1933 and '36 respectively) and as a public servant, filling posts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Alaska and Albuquerque, New Mexico and in the Middle East as director of President Truman's Point Four Program. Upon his move, Evans sold the property to George H. Chisholm (1870-1943), the Canadian-born president of the Atlas Steel Casting Company who remained there until his death.