COMMENTARY
Architecture is area’s new gold mine
Let the payoff begin. The steel mills are gone. The auto plants are shells of their former selves. The high cost of doing business here drives businesses away.
Invisible to many people, virtually hiding in plain sight, is a resource that now is nearly ready.
I saw it the past few days. Some 200 folks from around the country came to Buffalo. They walked through century-old buildings with the reverence of archaeologists probing a pharaoh’s tomb. They were drawn by an attraction that few cities can match. They declared that, yes, we have what it takes to stake our claim to a growing industry.
Their presence and enthusiasm underlined a point that true believers here have pounded for decades: There is gold in glorious architecture.
The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy today wraps up its five-day national conference. They were drawn here largely by the nearly finished restoration of the genius architect’s Darwin Martin House complex near Delaware Park. These people know what having a monumental Wright site has meant to other places across the country. Aside from anything else, it means money.
A horde of people will soon come from around the world to see this, and our other architectural and cultural lures. When the $48 million Martin House restoration is done in two years, it should open the door to a multimillion-dollar industry.
I cannot remember the last time we said that around here.
These glorious old buildings—from our Wright collection to iconic structures by Louis Sullivan and H. H. Richardson— are resources. Forget for a moment their aesthetic value, even though it is life-affirming and blesses us with a gorgeous urban landscape. The harder-edged point is that these are tools we can use to prod our dragging economy and to polish our dull Rust Belt image.
Even folks who don’t know Frank Lloyd Wright from Orville Wright can appreciate the impact of more than 60,000 visitors from around the world annually coming here and staying for a few days.
“Absolutely, what you have is an ‘A’ level attraction,” said Lynda Waggoner. “You will be surprised by the number of people who come to see it.”
Waggoner runs Fallingwater, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house that is—astoundingly—built around a waterfall in the middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. Despite being a 90-minute drive from any urban outpost, 160,000 people annually trek there—most of them from other states. The Martin House complex, Waggoner said, rates with Fallingwater and Manhattan’s Guggenheim museum among the top three Wright sites east of the Mississippi.
Add our other cultural lures, consider such one-size-fits-all attractions as Niagara Falls, factor in ease-of-access from the Thruway and the airport, and what I hear is the ringing of cash registers.
“What you will get are high-end tourists with disposable income,” said Waggoner. “Cultural tourism has become a very important piece of the economy in the United States. It is a good, healthy, sustainable kind of tourism that enhances the community.”
I am not saying that the Wright stuff will spawn the high-paying jobs that were spewed out of Bethlehem Steel or the GM plant. It is a cottage industry, not a big-bored, high-revving engine that propels an economy. But having it will help. It makes use of a world-class asset and it prompts people to see Buffalo in a different light.
A century ago, Buffalo was a big, muscular city filled with wealth and imagination. A collection of fabulous buildings is the legacy left by our prosperous ancestors. It is the gift that keeps on giving.
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