File:John S. O'Shea House, Buffalo, New York - 20220323.jpg

English: The John S. O'Shea House, 679 Busti Avenue, Buffalo, New York, March 2022. Overlooking Front Park and the Peace Bridge within the NRHP-listed Prospect Hill Historic District, this two-story frame-and-brick residence shares much in common with the John L. Kimberly House on Irving Place: both were built in the same year (1886) to a design by the same firm (Silsbee & Marling), and both presented the unique problem of how to adapt the Shingle Style, with its characteristic sprawling dimensions, onto a lot with narrow street frontage. However, while its counterpart responds by retaining more-or-less the usual configuration yet shrinking the dimensions into miniature, the O'Shea House takes full advantage of the depth of the parcel, sprawling from back to front rather than side to side: witness the wide twin gables on the side elevation, flared at the bottom, clad in the wooden shingles that give the style its name, and projecting slightly from the brick-faced ground floor. Conversely, it's on the façade where most of the architectural detail is to be found: a stubby octagonal turret with bell-shaped roof and fishscale shingle cladding dominates the upper portion, while the front entrance is crowned with a projecting pediment that boasts floral relief carvings on the tympanum and corbelled brick ancones beneath. Though a lovely residence equipped with every up-to-date convenience of the era, real estate brokers White & Fish at first struggled to find a long-term owner for the house: it was alternately advertised for sale or rent in the local press or leased to a revolving door of short-term occupants. In 1891, it finally came into the stable long-term possession of John Simon O'Shea (1855-1917), who was working as a contracting agent for the New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad at the time he moved in, and would go on to serve for a number of years as the city's Commissioner of Streets. O'Shea moved out in 1901.