File:Thomas J. Gardner House, Buffalo, New York - 20220401.jpg

English: The Thomas J. Gardner House, 61 Burke Drive, Buffalo, New York, April 2022. Built in 1927 for a price of $19,000, this handsome two-story residence is a fine example of the then-popular Tudor Revival style of architecture, with an asymmetrical façade incorporating multiple gables, a main entrance that's small and set off-center, interesting exterior classing in textured stucco, roof eaves decorated with wide vergeboards that are flared at the ends, and - most prominently - a large triple window on the ground floor framed with elegant wooden latticework. Shortly after its completion, the house was opened to the public as a stop on that year's edition of the Buffalo Evening News' annual "Homes Beautiful Tour" (an annual event showcasing the best of the area's "showpieces of modern home building art"), and ultimately served as a beacon luring potential homebuyers to the tract of land that was being marketed at that time by Cleveland Hill Properties. (The moniker "Cleveland Hill" now denotes a separate but nearby neighborhood, centered on the intersection of Cleveland Drive and Harlem Road in the adjacent Town of Cheektowaga; the neighborhood today is properly known as Treehaven or Judges' Row.) Promotional literature sheds light on the character of the interior: the living room boasted an open fireplace and ample natural lighting; the kitchen featured tiled walls and a breakfast alcove; the upstairs contained three bedrooms and a bathroom finished in colored tile. The house's eventual purchaser, Thomas Jacob Gardner (1883-1963), was a rather colorful figure who was ostensibly an intermittently employed car salesman, but whose primary means of support seems to have been as a bookkeeper in a horse betting parlor in Lackawanna. Gardner made front-page news in 1939 as one of 11 defendants indicted in the State Supreme Court in the aftermath of a series of raids by county sheriff's deputies on illegal gambling operations in Buffalo's suburbs. He lived there until his death.