File:Howard W. Cowan House, Buffalo, New York - 20220111.jpg

English: The Howard W. Cowan House, 90 Meadow Road, Buffalo, New York, January 2022. Built in 1927 and situated within the upper-class, Frederick Law Olmsted-inspired residential subdivision then known as Delaware Acres and now comprising the NRHP-listed Parkside West Historic District, the Cowan House was among the first independent commissions of architect Frederick C. Backus, who had recently established his own practice after a time serving as city architect, and would later help to pioneer the revolutionary Modernist aesthetic on the local level as senior partner in the firm of Backus, Crane & Love. Here Backus works in the then-popular Tudor Revival style, with the requisite asymmetrical façade, profusion of gables and dormers, and cream-colored stucco façade. A more unusual touch is the flared eaves, which are particularly evident between the dormers on the hip-roofed wing at right. A local native and World War I veteran, Howard Wallace Cowan (1892-1957) made a handsome living as a wholesale pharmaceutical merchant as junior partner in the Plimpton-Cowan Company, and later became president of the Spiro Powder Company, a cosmetics manufacturer in Niagara Falls. Cowan lived in the house until his death.