File:Great Wall Chinese Restaurant - fmr C & M Grocery, Andrew Werner drugstore, Jehle's Grocery et al. - Buffalo, New York - 20201202.jpg

English: Great Wall Chinese Restaurant, 914-916 Elmwood Avenue at West Delavan Avenue, Buffalo, New York, December 2020. A good example of turn-of-the-century commercial architecture, the predominant characteristics seen on this flat-roofed, Queen Anne-style edifice are the two-story oriel windows that feature on its façade and north lateral elevations, featuring paneled spandrels and ornamented at the top with swag reliefs. Although the main storefront facing Elmwood Avenue has lost its historic integrity, the side one facing West Delavan Avenue has not; a recessed entryway bedecked with a slender Corinthian column and paneled bulkheads below the shop windows are to be found there. Rough-textured stone lintels and windowsills contrast with a buff brick façade. The entire ground floor is now occupied by one single business, but for most of its early history, the building was divided into two separate retail parcels. Its initial tenants, starting from the building's completion in 1898, were the C&M Grocery (at 914 Elmwood, to the left in this photo) and Andrew Werner's drug store (at 916 Elmwood, to the right). Both were branch locations of businesses headquartered elsewhere: C&M was originally located at the corner of Ashland and Breckenridge, and also inaugurated a third store on Lexington Avenue the same year the one on Elmwood opened. By 1905, they'd consolidated their operations on Lexington, a much larger space than either of the others. Meanwhile, Kentucky-born Andrew Werner (1861-1945) enjoyed a significantly longer tenure in the building than his neighbor: he continued operating both the 916 Elmwood location of his pharmacy business as well as the original one at 274 High Street until 1913, when he moved his family and business to the new suburb of Kenmore. Another early tenant was Jehle's Grocery, whose owner Urban Jehle (1881-1944) took over for C&M at 914 Elmwood; notably, the closure of his retail shop in 1918 came about due to his founding of the Merchants Mutual Insurance Company, whose main business originally was offering protection for grocery delivery vehicles. For its part, current tenant Great Wall Chinese Restaurant has been an Elmwood Village mainstay since 1994.