800 Delaware Ave

The Knox Mansion at 800 Delaware Avenue represents the apogee of Delaware Avenue's grandeur, built for Seymour H. Knox Sr., co-founder of the five-and-dime retail chain that would become the F.W. Woolworth Company. Completed in 1915 and designed by Buffalo's preeminent architectural firm of Green & Wicks, the mansion exemplifies the formal Georgian Revival style that wealthy Americans favored in the early twentieth century as a dignified alternative to the exuberance of Victorian eclecticism.

Green & Wicks — responsible for many of Buffalo's finest public and private buildings of the era — brought their considerable command of historical styles to bear on this commission. The result is a rigorously symmetrical red brick and limestone mansion set back from Delaware Avenue behind a formal forecourt, conveying wealth through restraint and proportion rather than ornament.

The house is organized on a grand scale appropriate to the Knox family's social position. The formal rooms along the Delaware Avenue facade — including a double-height ballroom on the south end — were designed for entertaining on a lavish scale, with plaster ceilings, marble fireplaces, and oak paneling of the highest quality. The rear of the house contains more intimate family rooms arranged around a sun-filled garden courtyard.

Seymour Knox Sr. was a central figure in Buffalo's Gilded Age civic and cultural life. His son, Seymour Knox Jr., would go on to found the Albright-Knox Art Gallery's modern collection. The mansion was later adapted for institutional use and today serves as a private club and events venue, its grand rooms preserved for the community to enjoy.