Buffalo, N.Y., has a rich architectural history with many buildings from the late 19th and early 20th century, including many structures designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. In 1927, Wright designed a fuel filling station that was to be built on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cherry Street in downtown Buffalo, but was never built.
In the 1970s, Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum founder and executive director James T. Sandoro learned of sketches of a prototypical filling station designed for a utopian community Wright named Broadacre City. Sandoro spent the last 40 years researching, prototyping, fundraising and overseeing its construction. The 1,600-square-foot filling station measures approximately 40 feet by 40 feet and is housed in a 38,000-square-foot addition to the museum.
Once permission was received from the Wright Foundation to develop the design drawings based on the Broadacre sketches, Sandoro involved architect and Wright enthusiast Patrick Mahoney, AIA, NCARB, associate at Lauer-Manguso & Associates Architects, Buffalo, to help fulfill the building’s final vision. Mahoney, supported by letters written to another Buffalo client in the 1920s, surmised that an earlier station had been designed by Wright for the Elmer E. Harris Oil Co. in Buffalo. With the assistance of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives in Scottsdale, Ariz., the Harris Station drawings were identified. Once identified, Lauer-Manguso worked with Wright apprentice Tony Puttnam to interpret the drawings for modern construction.
In contrast to the utilitarian gas stations that had begun to sprout up at the time, John Embow, vice president at Grove Roofing Services, Buffalo, says Wright envisioned a luxurious consumer-friendly facility with deluxe bathrooms, wood-burning fireplaces, gravity-fed gas pumps and a second-story, glass-enclosed living room.
Richard Foley, the former superintendent at Grove Roofing now retired, was involved in the project for 12 years and completed all of the copper work on the building. Foley notes this was a very challenging building to work on because of its unusual shape, angles and details. “[Wright] detailed specific ways that he wanted the copper work fabricated and installed on the building, and his details are very challenging,” Foley says.
Revere Copper Products Inc., Rome, N.Y., founded in 1801 by Paul Revere, supplied all of the copper for the project, which was completed in July 2013. The project uses 440 individual pieces of 16-ounce copper for the filling station’s standing seam roof. As intended in Wright’s original design, every 15-inch-wide by 1-inch-high, double-lock standing seam panel was individually shop-fabricated. Foley notes that instead of creating a seam at the roof ridges, Wright wanted to bring the copper up, cut it and continue down the other side without a seam, which was very challenging.
With a nod to Native American design, the filling station features two 38-foot-high copper totems that support an abstractly lettered “TYDOL” in red, neon-like LED lighting. The letters stand for Tydol Oil Co., a popular brand at the time and the intended benefactor of Wright’s designs. The four-sided totem columns are 12 by 12 inches at the bottom and each section tapers up by 1/32-inch to 6 by 6 inches at the top. “All of the pieces on the totems are hand-cut miters, are soldered from the inside and are perfect,” Foley says.On the cantilevered canopies, 24-inch-wide copper fascia transitions to an angled soffit and screen vent. Consisting of five pieces, the assembly complements the red clay stucco ceiling and walls. Blending into the adjoining patterned red concrete walls, the capital columns were created out of individual pieces of heavier 1/2- by 4-inch copper plate that were saw-cut and assembled with pop rivets on their concealed backsides. While the underlying units were constructed with wood and glass, 16-ounce copper bands were skinned onto the wood to designate the gallons of fluid left in the hanging gravity gas pumps.
The museum’s east side is almost entirely glass, flooding the filling station in natural light that radiates the shine and beauty of the copper finish. The museum’s new addition features a second-story balcony that wraps three sides of the filling station, allowing visitors to gain unique views from many vantage points.
Frank Lloyd Wright Filling Station, Buffalo, N.Y.
Award: 2014 Ornamental North American Copper in Architecture Award (NACIA) from the Copper Development Association
Owner: Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum, Buffalo
Architect: Lauer-Manguso & Associates Architects, Buffalo
General contractor: R&P Oak Hill Development, Blasdell, N.Y.
Sheet metal contractor: Grove Roofing Services, Buffalo
Copper: Revere Copper Products Inc., Rome, N.Y.,
www.reverecopper.com, Circle #XX