File:Mayer-Roberts House, Buffalo, New York - 20210410.jpg

English: The Mayer-Roberts House, 1115 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, New York, April 2021. The appearance of this amply-sized three-story manse is emblematic of the Queen Anne style favored by architect Charles Day Swan, whose design for it dates to 1892 (the house's inventory form filed with the New York State Division for Historic Preservation gives c. 1880 as the date of its construction and names Charles Gies and William Preston as early owners, but this is an error and most likely refers to an earlier structure on the same lot). There's a distinct horizontal layering to the façade, and it positively brims with detail: the ground floor is faced in brick and dominated frontally by a full-width, hip-roofed front porch with spindly Ionic columns and two sets of steps flanking a projecting central portion; the shingle-faced second floor features varied fenestration (from left to right: twin straight-headed windows, a bay window, and a leaded-glass elliptical window) flanked by Ionic pilaster strips, topped by a frieze with festoon reliefs and fronted by a narrow porch; the most interesting element of the gable's design scheme is an unusual pattern of horizontal strips flared at the bottom and ending in ridges of soffit, but the eye is also drawn to the pair of leaded-glass Palladian windows topped with tall ornamental keystones and shingles in an arch pattern suggestive of window heads, with an inverted triangle delineating the tympanum between them. As well, on the north side elevation (visible at left here) is found an even more elaborate Palladian window, with Classical elements in the form of columns intercalated between the glass panes. A native of Verden, Lower Saxony, Joseph Bell Mayer (1849-1951) was a prominent Buffalonian who wore many hats: he was a real estate investor with profitable holdings on the Polish East Side, a jewelry merchant with the firm of Guggenheim, Aiken & Co., and co-founder and eventual president of the Buffalo Traction Company, operator of one of the city's several electric streetcar networks. Mayer lived in the house for seven years with his wife Belle and their three children, including eldest daughter Eugenia, whose future husband Albert Langford would go on to notoriety in 1945 as the victim of the still-unsolved Hotel Marguery murder in New York City. Mayer sold the house in 1899 to James Arthur Roberts (1847-1922), an attorney and politico who'd earlier served terms in the State Assembly and as State Comptroller; he remained there until his move to New York City in 1904. Later on in its history, beginning about 1950, the building found use as a senior residence, Gardner Nursing Home. It's now apartments.