595 Delaware Ave

The Twentieth Century Club at 595 Delaware Avenue stands as one of the finest examples of Beaux-Arts civic architecture on Buffalo's grand Delaware Avenue corridor. Designed by the prominent Buffalo firm of Green & Wicks and completed in 1894, the clubhouse was built to serve one of Buffalo's most distinguished women's organizations, founded in 1894 to advance the intellectual and cultural life of the city's women.

The architects — Edward Brodhead Green and William Sidney Wicks — were at the height of their powers when they received this commission, and the result is a confident exercise in the classical language that would dominate American institutional architecture through the early twentieth century. The facade is composed in the grand Beaux-Arts manner, with a rusticated limestone base supporting engaged Ionic columns and pilasters at the piano nobile level, topped by a richly detailed entablature and cornice.

The building's interior is equally distinguished. The main ballroom, with its barrel-vaulted ceiling, decorative plasterwork, and original chandeliers, has hosted generations of Buffalo's cultural and intellectual life. The library and reading rooms retain their original millwork and built-in shelving.

Delaware Avenue in the 1890s was at the peak of its glory as Buffalo's most fashionable residential and institutional address. Lined with the mansions of Buffalo's industrial elite and punctuated by civic institutions like the Twentieth Century Club, it presented one of the finest streetscapes in America. The Club building has been carefully maintained and continues to operate as a private club, preserving its role as an anchor of this historic corridor.