File:Verizon Main Street Wire Center - fmr New York Telephone Crescent Exchange Building - Buffalo, New York - 20211013.jpg

English: The Verizon Main Street Wire Center at 2743 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, as seen in October 2021. Like many if not most of the telephone exchange buildings constructed in the early 20th century, the architecture seen here is an example of the so-called "stripped Classical" style, in which the principles of Neoclassicism are presented in simplified and minimalist forms to project an air of formality while allowing construction costs on institutional buildings such as this to avoid ballooning to unprofitable levels. The style is most evident on the bottom two floors of the front segment of the building - the first portion to be built, in 1916 - wherein the windows are surrounded by cut-stone trim and topped with ancone-style keystones, projecting vertical elements in the buff-brick masonry between the windows are fashioned into Doric pilaster strips, an entablature with ancone supports and a dentil row frames the entrance, and a frieze and dentillated cornice tops everything off. The upper stories and rear annex of the building were an addition constructed in 1932. The building was constructed by the New York Telephone Company to house its so-called CRescent Exchange, a $200,000 facility built to accommodate expanded telephone service for the then-rapidly growing neighborhoods of Central Park, Parkside, and University Heights which were heretofore served by equipment in a much smaller leased space at the corner of Parker Avenue, and still serves a similar function for corporate successor Verizon.