Buffalo Meter Company/Bethune Hall /Bethune Lofts
2917 Main Street, Buffalo NY

Erected:

1917

Architect:

Lockwood Greene & Co. (Boston)
Also: Larkin Co. Terminal Warehouse

Style:

 Daylight Factory

Founder:

George Barclay Bassett
Status:
State and National Registers of Historic Places

Bethune Lofts at Buffalo Meter Co. - Official Website  (online June 2022)

History of Bethune Lofts

On October 1, 1892, George B. Bassett established the Buffalo Meter Company in order to manufacture water meters from his own patents. In 1915, growth of the company facilitated the need for a new building to house operations.  The company enlisted the nationally prominent firm of Lockwood, Greene & Co., based in Boston, Massachusetts, a firm also known for their role in designing Buffalo's Pierce Arrow Factory and the Larkin Exchange building. Construction of the new Buffalo Meter Company Building was completed in 1917.

Housed in their new facility on Main Street, the Buffalo Meter Company continued to be one of the nation's most prominent makers of liquid meters during the first half of the twentieth-century. Originally, the company located their main offices and shipping on the first floor, the Machine Shop and Assembling on the second, another Machine Shop and tool room on the third floor and the brass foundry on the fourth floor.

In 1969 or 1970, the Buffalo Meter Company left the Main Street building because their multi-level manufacturing facility was outdated.

On May 27, 1971 the former Buffalo Meter Company Building was purchased by the University at Buffalo. Beginning in 1973, the building was used by the University to house the Department of Art, the Architecture Department and also portions of the Division of Continuing Education. It was renamed as the Louise Blanchard Bethune Hall, after the first professional woman architect and the first woman fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

The building had a role in the 1983 movie "The Natural" starring Robert Redford; it was one of many Buffalo-area buildings and sites filmed for the movie and was used as a stand-in as an early 1900s industrial building. By 1994, the University had vacated the former Buffalo Meter Company Building, and the building was auctioned in July of 2005 by the State of New York.  It was purchased by a Ciminelli led partnership in 2010.

The Buffalo Meter Company Building has been added to the State and National Registers of Historic Places as an excellent, intact example of a daylight factory in the City of Buffalo.   We celebrate the history of Bethune Lofts as will be evident throughout the building, and are proud to share its adaptive re-use with the entire City of Buffalo.

- Bethune Lofts at Buffalo Meter Co. (online October 2017)
Illustrations courtesy of Jennifer Walkowski and Clinton Brown Clinton Brown Company Architecture/Rebuild


George Barclay Bassett, Founder in 1892






1907 Terrace Street plant



1916 Sanborn map (2917 Main St. address)



1916 Sanborn map - Detail



C. 1920



1922 ad



1950 Sanborn map



1950 Sanborn map - Detail



Page by Chuck LaChiusa in 2012
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