File:Lyth Cottage, Buffalo, New York - 20210102.jpg

English: The Lyth Cottage, 16 Harwood Place, Buffalo, New York, January 2021. One of the oldest extant structures in the city's locally- and NRHP-listed Hamlin Park Historic District, the first documentation of the Lyth Cottage's existence dates to 1886, when it's recorded as the residence of one Frank Schemkie. However, its actual date of construction is most likely the mid- to late 1870s, as an outbuilding on the estate of John Lyth (1846-1903), the English-born owner of the J. Lyth and Sons Tile Company, at the time America's leading manufacturer of ceramic tile and sewer pipe. Lyth used it as the residence of his housekeeper, and it served that purpose until c. 1885, when he subdivided his property and laid out Harwood Place - "Harwood" being his wife Mary Ann's maiden name - on its south end. Still, most of the residents of the street in those initial years, including Schemkie, were Lyth employees. The cottage is a fine (and well-preserved) example of the Italianate style of architecture, with Lyth's tile works as the source of some nifty details on the façade: witness the oversized decorative voussoirs adorning the tops of the round-arched windows, made of Lyth ceramic and intricately detailed. The bricks themselves, too, are hollow tile ones. The house's current owner, Matt Newton, purchased the place in 2012, and his work has converted it from a state of advanced decrepitude to beautifully restored inside and out, including most prominently the original windows.