Packard Motor Car Showroom and Storage Facility, Buffalo New York

Date added: August 03, 2023 Categories: New York Auto Companies Kahn, Albert

Facing East. West Facade and south elevation along Riley Street (2005)

The Packard Motor Car Showroom and Service Building at 1325 Main Street is a distinguished example of an early twentieth-century automobile showroom and service building in Buffalo, New York. It was the site of a large Northeast distributorship for the Packard automobile for nearly 30 years. Designed in ca. 1926 by one of the foremost American Industrial architects of his day, Albert Kahn also designed one of his major works, the Pierce-Arrow Factory on Elmwood Avenue in 1906 and the later Ford Motor Company Factory on Main Street in Buffalo, New York. This new building type known as the "Automobile Showroom" designed by Kahn is a three-story, reinforced concrete frame building with restrained Neo-classical style features. Each of the Packard Motor Car Company buildings featured a showroom in front, where the cars were displayed with sales offices on a mezzanine or second floor and a practical backstage where cars were stored and serviced. The Buffalo building is further distinguished by the substantial storage space for automobiles reflecting its role as one of Packard's Northeast distribution sites. By the 1920's "Automobile Showroom" construction had become highly competitive, and auto companies and dealers scrambled to obtain the services of prominent architects. This architecture came to symbolize the power of the established corporations and the prosperity of the individual dealer. It was at this time that the Packard Motor Car of Buffalo was built on Main Street. Mr. Ralph E. Brown, President of the dealership moved from Delaware Avenue in 1927 into this new building. Buffalo was becoming an important automobile production center with the Pierce-Arrow Factory and the Ford Motor Company Factory and Main Street "Automobile Row", a new type of commercial strip was lined with automobile production, sales and service facilities.

The Packard Motor Car Company was established in 1899 by James Ward Packard, an engineer and inventor who held many patents. Packard's first company, founded with his brother William, produced light bubs based on a patent that he later sold to Westinghouse. According to legend, Packard was unhappy with the Winton automobile he had purchased and decided that he could do better himself. Packard began producing cars in 1899 in Warren, Ohio. Early on the request from a prospective customer for a brochure with information on the new Packard led to the company's life-long slogan when Packard replied "..just Ask the Man Who Owns One". An early investor, Henry Joy, was instrumental in convincing Packard to move his facility to the Detroit, Michigan, area. Joy would become President of Packard in 1903. Early innovations and fine products like the 1920's Twin Six twelve-cylinder engine, established Packard's reputation as a builder of high-quality luxury cars. By the late 1920's when Buffalo's Packard showroom was built Packard produced more automobiles annually than any other American luxury make and was equally well respected throughout Europe. The depression brought hard times for all auto manufacturers, but it was especially difficult for Packard, an independent producer of only fine cars. In 1935 Packard Motor Car Company made the historic move of joining the ranks of mass production by offering the Model 120, priced at under $1000, placing it clearly in the upper medium price field. This, and the subsequent Model 110 with prices as low as $795, would save the company and allow it to survive the depression and introduce new models after World War II. The company brought in George Christopher, a former General Motors production wizard, to enable the transition to mass production. Although he did not work well with the existing company leaders, Christopher would go on to become president of Packard. He continuously promised the company's dealers that production would surpass 200,000 vehicles. For various reasons, some of them of Christopher's making, the company never reached even half of that promised number. Problems with management plagued the company after the war and in two years alone, from 1947 to 1949, Packard lost 500 dealers. By the 1950's the company was struggling after a financially draining merger with fellow independent automaker Studebaker. The last "real" Packards were produced in 1956 followed by two years of Studebaker-based Packards with the final car to carry the Packard name produced in 1958.

Albert Kahn and Packard

Albert Kahn was born in Germany in 1869 and emigrated with his family to the United States in 1881. Kahn received his professional training as an apprentice with the Detroit architectural firm of Mason and Rice and, although he traveled in Europe in 1891 to "tour" the sites of antiquities, he did not have the classical training associated with other prominent architects of his time who had studied at the Ecole des Beaux Artes in Paris. Early in his professional career he was in a partnership, but by 1902 he was working alone. As a young architect in the city where the birth of the American automobile industry occurred, Kahn became associated with the design of production facilities for automobiles. He is, perhaps, best known for his industrial buildings that used the latest construction methods to house the newest production technology. Kahn's brother held a patent for reinforcing rods employed in concrete construction and this gave him an advantage in the use of this new technique. Kahn had been brought to work at Packard by then-President Henry Joy in 1903 and between 1903 and 1905 he designed 9 factory buildings for the company. In 1905 he designed the landmark Packard #10 building, employing the reinforced concrete in an unprecedented way to produce wide-open workspaces for the production lines and vast spans of windows to bring natural light into the work areas. Packard #10, on the fabled East Grand Boulevard in Detroit, is recognized as the first building truly designed for the technology of automobile production. Kahn went on to design for other manufacturers, including parts of the Pierce Arrow facility in Buffalo, New York and the huge River Rouge plant for Ford in Dearborn, Michigan. In reference to Kahn's Pierce Arrow plant in Buffalo, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians stated that "...the Pierce plant introduced into automobile factory design the one story, roof-lit, wide span format of unlimited horizontal dimension..." Buffalo's Ford Plant on Main Street, near Hertel Avenue, later the Trico Plant, is another example of Kahn's work for Ford.

In more rare circumstances, Kahn was called upon by Packard to design auto showroom facilities. The Packard Building in Buffalo is one of these, however, there are other significant examples. Kahn designed a showroom and offices in 1910 for Packard in Philadelphia, Pa. This early showroom shows a lineage to his factory buildings done for Packard leading up to that time. In 1912 Kahn designed a showroom for Packard in Providence, Rhode Island that was never built. A Packard showroom was built in that city but the architect is listed as James Hutchins Cady and it is possible that Kahn's design was influential in the final form. Here the building has progressed to a more stylized exterior showing classical forms and terra cotta cladding. Buffalo's Packard Building of 1926 demonstrates similar inspiration and shares its massing and window grouping with the Providence showroom. The form of Kahn's classical showrooms can be traced back to his turn-of-the-century "classical tour' and a sketch dated January 18, 1891. Here Kahn's sketch of a building in Rome abstracts the purest lines of the classical form.

Although Kahn is most noted for his unadorned, functional factory designs, the Classical showrooms were not his only venture into historicism. Kahn designed residences for Packard executives, some in historical styles, and the Packard Proving Grounds complex, in Utica Michigan, was highlighted by Tudor-Revival style buildings. Kahn also designed a residence for Edsel Ford, son of Henry Ford, in Grosse Point, Michigan, again in a Tudor/Elizabethan style.

Buffalo's Automobile Industry

The city of Buffalo and the automobile industry have had a long and full connection since auto production started in the United States. As the 20th-Century began, the City of Buffalo was a contender for becoming a major automobile production center in the United States. Some of the big names in early automobile development were present in Buffalo in the early 1900s. Pierce Arrow built fine luxury vehicles on Elmwood Avenue and Ford built Model T's on Main Street, both in Albert Kahn designed buildings. The Thomas Flyer was a Buffalo built make produced by the E. R. Thomas Company. Although the proliferation of the auto was not foreseen at that time (a 1903 Buffalo newspaper article stated that "It is not possible that the automobile will ever become a poor man's vehicle---a machine for general popular use, such as the bicycle."), Buffalo was quickly becoming the premier New York State auto city. In 1912, the Buffalo Live Wire wrote that Buffalo manufactured nearly one-third of all autos, bodies and parts in New York State and that Buffalo's auto industry exceeded that of New York City. It was, perhaps, best stated by Colonel W. Mixter, president of the Pierce Arrow Company, who in 1900 said: "Not less than 100,000 people in Buffalo depend directly on the motor industry", and that the auto/truck industry was at that time the "largest single element in the vast manufacturing interests of Buffalo". In the end, over 30 different makes of automobiles would be produced in Buffalo throughout the 20^th Century. Buffalo was also involved in the short-lived electric automobile industry in the first decades of the Twentieth Century. Four electric auto producers, the Babcock Electric Carriage Company, the Buffalo Automobile Station Company, the Van Wagoner Electric Vehicle Company and the Clark Motor Company, would merge in 1912 into the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company that built electric cars in a building on Main Street just one block south of the Packard Building. In fact, at one time Packard maintained a showroom and service bay in that very building and Ostendorf Motors (later owners of the Packard Building and distributorship) had a showroom in that building up to 1942. Although the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Co. ceased production before the construction of the Packard Building, the Main Street sales and manufacturing building would remain associated with the automobile industry as late as the 1950s when Hudson motorcars were sold from the site.

If Buffalo was a major player in the auto industry game, it was surely Main Street where that game played out. From Hertel Avenue to the North, south to downtown, both sides of Main Street were lined with automobile production, sales and service facilities. Most of these buildings were built specifically for auto-related use. Albert Kahn's aforementioned Ford Plant at the north end being one of the largest and block after block of dealerships built from the early teens up to the 1940s, including Pierce Arrow's renowned art-deco showroom on Main opposite Jewitt Parkway and the Kahn's Packard Showroom Building at 1325 Main Street.

In the early years of the American automobile industry, the luxury field was dominated by the "Three P's": Pierce Arrow, Peerless and Packard. Although Peerless would be no longer manufactured after 1931, Pierce Arrow's sales and production facilities and Packard's sales and distributorship would be important parts of Buffalo's auto history before World War II. Of the "Three P's', only Packard would survive after the War.

Early Automobile Showrooms

In the early part of the 20^th Century, an aesthetic developed for the auto showroom. Until the Model T introduced the auto to the masses, automobile ownership was restricted mostly to the wealthy. Advertising of the time reflected this as can be seen in a Pierce Arrow magazine ad of 1919 showing the car in a sophisticated setting featuring elegantly dressed people. Auto showrooms for luxury cars of the era were similarly designed to appeal to the sophisticated buyer. Buffalo's Pierce Arrow showroom is an art deco treasure built on Main Street in 1929-1933 for Packard's locally-built competitor. Another of Packard's contemporary competitors was Lincoln and this finely detailed showroom was built in Detroit Michigan the year that Buffalo's Packard Building opened (1927).

It was not just auto dealerships that used elegant showrooms for their products. The Firestone Tire building in Fort Worth Texas shows how a related industry was housed in an ornate terracotta and brick building

The Packard Building in Buffalo

The Packard Building in Buffalo is representative of these fine buildings constructed for the sale of automobiles. The Packard dealership moved into the Main Street building in 1927 from its previous site on Delaware Avenue. The President of the dealership was Ralph E. Brown. Brown had earlier been a sales representative for the Winton automobile and for Studebaker. He became one of Packard's major northeast distributors in 1922 and retired in 1931. Ralph Brown died in 1934. A building permit was given to the Packard Motor Car Co. in January of 1926 for the construction of a 2-story reinforced concrete and steel building with an estimated cost of $175,000. The site occupied the northeast corner of Main and Riley Streets. Just north of the building (at 1335-1339 Main Street), a previously constructed auto building was used to sell the short-lived Falcon Knight automobile (introduced in 1926, with production ending in 1928) and later became a site for the sale of used cars. The Packard Building, at 1325 Main Street, opened on June 7, 1926, with a large photo appearing in the previous day's Buffalo Express with a caption that stated: "The showrooms are considered among the finest in Western New York." As initially built it was a 2-story building housing showrooms, offices and storage for new cars. By October of the following year, the owner had applied for a permit to enlarge the building by adding a 2-story concrete and brick addition at an estimated cost of $60,000. The structural design of the building, with concrete piers and beams, followed the design of Kahn's factory buildings for Packard and other auto manufacturers. The exterior cladding, however, was done in stone and bronze in a Neo-Classical Revival style. Fluted stone pilasters with decorative capitals, bronze trimmed windows, a dentiled cornice and the name "Packard" incised in stone highlighted both the West and South facades on the front third of the building. This front third housed the showroom and offices on the first floor. They were highly styled as befitted the dealership for America's premier luxury automobile with an exquisite multi-colored tile floor, offices paneled in oak with leaded glass doors and windows leading into the showroom and a double stair with tile steps and decorative wrought iron rail leading to the second floor. The remaining two-thirds of the building was much simpler in design, reminiscent of Kahn's industrial buildings. The facade was done in brick with the windows set in steel frames. This portion of the building housed a service and preparation area and consisted mostly of storage for the Packards that arrived in Buffalo from Detroit via lake freighter, awaiting shipment to various dealerships in the Northeast. The automobiles entered the building on Riley Street and reached the upper area via a sweeping ramp on the Northeast side of the structure. Kahn's reinforced concrete piers and beams allowed for large open areas for the maneuvering and storage of the Packards. Two rows of interior concrete columns support the beams and floor slab above that are poured as one. This gives extraordinary strength to support the automobiles on all three floors while allowing ease of maneuverability. Of note is a unique exhaust venting system that features pipes running through the centers of the concrete columns up to and exhausting at the roof. The columns contain fittings to attach hoses from the auto exhausts allowing the cars to be run without opening windows for ventilation. Kahn's typical "daylight factory" construction allows for large window openings that fill the relatively narrow building with light.

The building continued to be the site for the Packard showroom and distributorship until Packard ceased production in 1958 (the dealership added Studebaker cars in 1955). The last owners of the dealership were Carolyn Ostendorf and her sons George and Renwick Ostendorf. The Ostendorf family had been associated with the dealership since 1933. George C. Ostendorf (husband of Carolyn and father of George and Renwick), known locally as "the Franklin Man", established Ostendorf Motors. He had been a local distributor for the Syracuse based H.H. Franklin Manufacturing Co. since 1907. His widow and sons became the final Packard dealers and purchased the building from the Packard Motor Car Company in 1948. With the end of Packard auto production in 1958, the building closed as a car showroom. George Ostendorf went on to become a local director with Blue Cross and Renwick Ostendorf became a salesman with a local Cadillac Dealer, Kinney Cadillac.

The building remained vacant for a year and in 1960 it became the site of Brenner Music Co., selling pianos where Packards once were shown. By 1964, the building housed D'Amico Discount House, a furniture store, and it became the Manpower Training and Development Center by 1970. In the 1970's the CETA job-training program was housed at 1325 Main Street. The building continued to be used for various office and commercial uses including a carpet cleaning company that was housed in the site for many of its later years. In 1992 it was sold at auction for then-owner Schmidt's Garage. The building fell into disrepair and was eventually taken by the City for back taxes. Current owner Cash Cunningham bought the building in 1997 and rehabilitated it for use as offices and storage. In 2001 the building became offices for its current owner with the remainder of the building returning to use as auto storage. Plans have been announced by Regan Development for a project to rehabilitate the building into housing.

Building Description

The Packard Building is located at 1325 Main Street in the City of Buffalo, New York. The former Packard Showroom and Distributorship is sited on the Northeast corner of Main and Riley Streets with a 78-foot frontage on Main Street and a 314-foot frontage on Riley Street. The building completely fills the lot. The Squier Mansion sits on the Southeast corner of Main and Riley and the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company building is one block south on Main Street. The area is in the middle of what was once known as Buffalo's Auto Row.

The Packard Building was designed by Albert Kahn in 1926. Kahn had designed several buildings for Packard, including showrooms in other major U.S. cities. As built, the building was a two-story reinforced concrete structure with its primary elevation on Main Street. A short time after its opening in 1927, the building was expanded to its current form with a third floor above the then-existing footprint. Structurally, the Packard building contains steel-reinforced concrete piers and beams allowing wide-open spaces and expansive windows in all parts of the structure. A six-inch concrete slab separates the first and second floors. A similar slab occurs above the second floor and is topped by a layer of roofing and another concrete slab forming the base of the third floor. A flat roof surrounded by a parapet covers the building.

In form, the Packard Building is made up of two distinct parts: the former showroom/office piece and the automobile service/storage portion. The showroom/office portion is in the front one-third of the building while the remaining two-thirds are the service/storage areas. Access to the showroom and offices is from Main Street on the West side of the building, while access to the service and storage areas is on Riley Street from the South side of the building. There is minimal access from the rear and North sides of the building since an adjacent two-story structure (also built for auto sales and storage) predates the Packard Building by 5 years. The driveway directly behind the Packard Building is for access to the adjacent structure.

The front third of the Packard Building is finished in stone. Facing Main Street, there are three bays in the original first two floors. Fluted stone pilasters, capped by capitals with winged figures flanking medallions, separate the window bays. As built, the end bays were filled with windows above stone panels and sills and the center bay contained an entrance surrounded by glass. All three bays were framed in decorative bronze metal. All three first-floor bays were topped with transom glass with identifying lettering for the dealership.

Discretely trimmed panels separated the first and second-floor windows of each bay and the second-floor windows repeated the broad plate glass of the first floor. When the third floor was added, steel-framed windows in groups of three were placed above each bay, separated by stone piers. The treatment on the end bays is repeated on the Riley Street (South) side of the showroom/office portion where four bays were found. In 1997 these facades were altered filling in the then-vandalized window spaces on the first and second floors with glass block and concrete block infill. At that time, a second Main Street entry was inserted into the northernmost bay, both entries covered by awnings with the Packard name in historically accurate script. The glass in the second-floor windows was replaced with metal and metal-framed windows. All bronze frames on both floors remain in place, as does the decorative work on the stone facade. The name "Packard" is incised in the center of the wide, smooth stone frieze above the first floor on both the Main and Riley Streets facades. Above this, the original top of the building consists of a tri-layered stone cornice sitting on a stone dentil molding. Above this cornice is the third floor where the 3-window groupings (three groupings on the Main Street facade, four on the Riley street side) contain openings filled with steel framed glass, with four stacked rows formed by a larger center pane flanked by narrow panes at each level. The third-floor windows are topped by a tri-partite stone cornice, itself topped by a stone balustrade, with narrow urn-shaped balusters separated by stone piers placed above each of the windows. A stone rail, mimicking the original cornice above the second floor, tops the balustrade.

The rear two-thirds of the Packard Building originally housed the service area for the dealership and, on three floors, storage for the major Packard distribution center at this site. The major facade of this section runs along Riley Street, facing south. The brick walls form fifteen bays, each slightly narrower than the bays in the front (Showroom) section of the building. The bays are separated by brick pilasters facing concrete piers running from the ground to the top of the second floor. The inset perimeters of the bays are trimmed by bricks, stacked on the short end and a soldier course of brick tops the second-floor windows, forming a string course that also serves as lintels above the second-floor windows. Above this soldier course, there are three successively projecting rows of horizontally laid brick. The windows have been treated similarly to those on the front portion of the building, showing the first-floor windows filled in with glass block and concrete block, the second-floor openings filled with new metal-framed windows and the third-floor windows with the original 12-lite configuration. The first and second-floor windows are separated by spandrels formed by 22 rows of brick set in American Common Bond. Stone sills occur below the second-floor windows and a stone string course runs below the third-floor windows, forming the sills. The first (western-most) bay shows third-floor windows configured similarly to the front section of the building, while the remaining fourteen bays have twelve equally sized panes in each opening.

Above the third-floor windows, a soldier course row of brick is followed by a stone string course above which sits a brick frieze topped by a shallow stone cap. The second and third bays (from the West side of this portion of the building) contain a metal overhead door and short inclined ramp leading to the original service area. The fifth bay contains an entry door to this section and the last (eastern-most bay) contains a metal overhead door leading to the auto ramp that services all three floors.

The East (rear) facade of the building contains four brick-faced bays, noticeably wider than those on the South facade. The first (southern-most) three contain large window openings finished similarly to the South facade and the last contains a stair tower leading to all three floors and the roof. All surface details present on the South facade are repeated on this East wall.

The 3-story North facade extends on the first two floors to meet the rear of the building adjacent to the Packard Building on Main Street. Here, three bays of unequal size are separated by concrete piers with windows only on the second-floor and on the third-floor facade that extends through to Main Street above the roof of the adjacent two-story building. The first two floors are in-filled with firebrick and the original multi-paned steel framed windows. The third-floor level shows brick infill, matching the tan brick on the remaining South and East facades. The concrete frame of the building is clearly displayed on this facade that would not have been visible to the general public.

On the South side of the roof, there is a metal conical roof water tank on supports, making it visible from the street. The tank is black with the name "Packard Motor Cars" in historic script done in white over a red hexagon, a symbol that appeared on the original Packard wheel discs. After 2000, the logo was hand-painted over the outline of the original design that had been painted over after the end of Packard Sales from the building.

The interior of the Packard Building is finished in a manner similar to the exterior in that the former showroom/office space at the front (West side) of the building is finished at a higher level than the service/storage spaces in the remainder of the building.

The first-floor showroom, in remarkably original condition, is characterized by a beautifully articulated multi-colored Spanish tile floor. The predominant colors are brown, tan and russet with accents in blue and green. The tile continues up the steps of the double staircase that meets at landing above the entry to the service area before continuing in a single flight to the second-floor offices. The staircase is on the east (back) wall of the showroom space. To the left of the staircase, along the North wall of the showroom are a sales offices, with oak paneled walls facing the showroom and multi-paned leaded glass windows in the panels and doors. A row of four concrete support columns run east-west through the center of the showroom with a series of round top arches culminating in piers forming a cross at the northernmost post. The staircase in the showroom leads only to the second floor, while a secondary stair in a stair hall in the northwest corner of the building leads to all three floors in this front section. This secondary stair hall has access from Main Street. This was not an original entrance and was added in the 1960s. The decorative stair from the showroom leads into a lobby on the second floor that gives access to the current office space, to a studio apartment with a bedroom/sitting room and bathroom and to a hall leading to the second-floor auto storage area. The second-floor offices consist of a reception room and conference room along the Main Street wall, a private office facing Riley Street and between them a large open office area with work areas defined by low-level moveable walls.

The remainder of the building, on all three floors, contains the service and storage spaces. The service space is located directly behind the showroom on the first floor and is reached through an arch below the stair landing in the showroom. Immediately to the right there is an enclosed concrete stair with iron pipe rail leading to all three floors. Beyond this, along the South wall is a short ramp leading to an overhead door to Riley Street and beyond the ramp, the car washing area. Storage rooms and lavatories are in a narrow band running north-south between the showroom and service area and the remainder of the space is open with reinforced concrete support piers and cross beams. At the Southeast corner of the first floor there is an overhead door leading to an auto ramp that sweeps along the East wall and continues in a half-elliptical curve to the second floor. This shape is repeated as the ramp moves from the second to the third floors.

The second-floor area in the service/storage part of the building and all of the third-floor space is open for auto storage, with some small, enclosed office/store rooms. This befits a building that was used as one of the major Northeast distribution sites for the Packard Motor Car Company. All levels are characterized by concrete floors and reinforced concrete columns and piers. The "Day-light" factory construction of the building allows for large open expanses and broad windows bringing natural light into each level. The floor slab and beams are poured as one and the composite is cantilevered from two rows of large, round concrete columns. The beams are concrete ribs, 18 inches on center, and the cantilevers extend to the exterior walls. The relatively narrow width of the building (78 feet) and the bands of south-facing windows filling the fifteen bays along Riley Street make the service area of the building exceptionally well lit. A unique venting systems runs through the columns, venting on the roof, allowing auto exhaust to be removed from the building by attaching hoses from the automobiles to fittings on the columns.

A service basement exists below the Northeast corner of the first floor. It contains the original steam boilers that are no longer functioning and a stairway that services all levels of the building in a tower that terminates in an exit at the roof.

The exterior and interior of the Packard Building retain a high level of integrity of design, materials and workmanship. The building is one of the sole remaining representations of the auto showroom/service buildings that once lined Main Street, Buffalo's "Auto Row'.