Preservation Buffalo Niagara is pursuing the special status for the Schlitz Brewery Tied House, a two-story commercial brick building that was constructed in 1909 at the northwest corner of Wilson Street. It originally consisted of a saloon on the first floor and boarding rooms upstairs, and as a “tied house” owned by Schlitz, it exclusively served the Milwaukee company’s beer to promote it.

When the Schlitz house was built, PBN noted in its application, William Street was bustling with activity as an East Side thoroughfare, with the streetcar line having begun operations in 1874, and the Jacob Dold Packing Co. opening a plant across the street. It was also near the New York Central railyard, St. Stanislaus Church and the Buffalo Stockyards cattle and pig pens.

The “tied house” system began in Great Britain, but had spread across the United States by the late 19th and early 20th centuries because of intense competition and increased legal restrictions, the filing said. By 1917, 90% of Buffalo’s saloon licenses were controlled by breweries, and the Schlitz bar would have competed against saloons tied to the Schreiber, Simon, Lang and Phoenix breweries, among others, PBN wrote.

Schlitz would even have selected the saloonkeepers for its first decade, until Prohibition ended the building’s use as a tied saloon, according to PBN. But it continued operating illegally as a “speakeasy,” despite being raided three times by Prohibition agents in 1924, 1929 and 1932. It was then vacant in the early to mid-1930s, before hosting a tailor shop, a delicatessen and three restaurants until 1953, according to PBN.

From 1955 until 2012, it was involved with the Ukrainian Club Nasha Hata and the Plast Ukrainian Youth Organization, but it is now vacant. The 3,120-square-foot building with a flat roof features a beveled corner entrance with a concrete insert and “subtle masonry detailing” between the two floors and at the parapet. There’s also two secondary entrances facing Wilson.

PBN argued that the building is worthy of preservation for its roots as a tied saloon, its links to “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” its history with immigrant working-class Buffalonians that patronized and boarded it and its relationship with Prohibition.

“The Schlitz Brewery Tied House is an increasingly scarce link to William Street’s history as one of Buffalo’s great commercial arteries,” PBN said. “It maintains a high degree of integrity, conveying its original function as a pre-Prohibition saloon and boarding house, and retaining the character-defining features of a small-scale commercial block building in the Broadway Fillmore neighborhood.”

The building’s address was originally 740 William, but it was changed to 840 after William Street was expanded westward from Michigan Avenue to Broadway in 1929, adding three blocks and multiple addresses at the lower end. The building is owned by the estate of Emilian Yemchuk, but PBN indicated that it was unclear whether the owners knew of or supported the application. The building is also eligible for listing on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

– Jonathan D. Epstein

Coming down

The Preservation Board last week allowed the demolition of older warehouse and office buildings at a former scrapyard on Marilla Street in South Buffalo that is being redeveloped into a more modern metals recycling facility and transfer station by Montreal-based American Iron & Metal Co.

AIM is planning to open what it says will be a modern facility to receive scrap metal from dealers and people, sort them and then ship them by rail or truck to shredding facilities elsewhere.

It would reuse an 8-acre site at 267 Marilla, at the corner of Marilla and Hopkins streets, that has previously been used as a junkyard for more than a century, in a highly commercial area with nearby train tracks and two other junkyards.

Most recently, the site had been used briefly by Niagara Metals, which fought unsuccessfully alongside neighbors to prevent AIM from getting municipal approval to restart the operation. Niagara had shut down its operation in 2020, just a year after it took over from Diamond Hurwitz Scrap, because it had concluded it wasn’t worth the level of complaints that it was getting from neighbors.

AIM says the proposed $8 million facility would not accept cars and other large or heavy metal items and would not be crushing, cutting or shredding metal. And it promises nearby residents that the new facility will look nothing like what they are used to and will operate much differently than any other junkyard.

AIM is demolishing the older buildings, which “are in disrepair and are not able to be used for the new operation,” according to a letter from project manager Eric Johnson of demolition contractor Zoladz Construction Co. of Alden.

New office for SWBR

Rochester architectural design firm SWBR has opened its first office in downtown Buffalo, after steadily gaining business locally in recent years.

The firm, which also has offices in Syracuse and Troy, opened an office at 500 Pearl St., on the first floor of Ellicott Development Co.’s mixed-use tower project that includes the Aloft Hotel. The firm currently employs two, but expects to grow to 10 in two years.