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Works of architect who helped shape Buffalo unearthed at estate sale By Mark Sommer The Buffalo News, November 5, 2019 Dennis Maher routinely scouts around for artifacts to include in his art installations. So, at first glance, the bucket the artist found for $20 at an estate sale on Grand Island seemed nothing unusual. That's until Maher took a closer look at the architectural renderings and blueprints tucked in among the rakes, shovels and cans of motor oil. The preserved documents, he discovered, were from August Minks who, as part of A. Minks & Son Architects, designed nearly 40 buildings in Buffalo more than a century ago. Maher, a clinical professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, had only known of Minks as the architect of Ahavas Sholem, an East Side Jewish synagogue with an exotic onion dome. Also known as the Jefferson Avenue Shul, it was demolished in 2014 after decades of neglect. "I've been collecting things for 20 years," Maher said. "The essence of a lot of my work is repurposing found things, and also thinking about the built environment. I was basically unfolding and unfurling the drawings and realizing what a treasure trove this is." Since his discovery in July 2017, Maher and two classes have been studying the prolific yet little-known architect and the legacy he left. Minks' career in Buffalo began in 1896 and ended with his death in 1910. During that time, he designed religious buildings, shops, warehouses and private residences throughout the city, with most in a former German area on the East Side. "Here's a guy who was born in Germany, emigrates to Hungary and was working as a patent engineer in Budapest," Maher said. "He comes to Buffalo with his family in his 50s with his wife, son and three daughters, sets up a shop and designs almost 40 buildings, many of them signature buildings in different ethnic communities." Minks, the student researchers found, had changed his name from Mende, which he used in Hungary, to his original German name when he came to Buffalo. His connections to Buffalo's Jewish, German, Hungarian and French communities led to commissions that included Our Lady of Lourdes Church, also known as "the French Church," at 1091 Main St., which Ellicott Development is converting to a mixed-use space. His designs also include a brick building housing Vilardo Printing, 326 Connecticut St., and Lorigo's Meating Place, 185 Grant St. More than half of Minks' works still stand, including those that are unoccupied or used differently than originally intended. "Minks' connections to different ethnic groups were instrumental in allowing those groups to establish their identities," Maher said. "He was also trying to establish a new identity for himself. It's really a marvelous story of assimilation and resistance to that at the same time, as an itinerant guy in an itinerant time moving among these different groups." Researching Minks Maher, also an artist, started an immersive sculptural environment in 2009 at the Fargo House, his own residence, portions of which were later exhibited at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, where he was 2012-2013 artist-in-residence. Other exhibitions have included the Mattress Factory Art Museum in Pittsburgh and the Black and White Gallery and Project Space in Brooklyn. To explore Minks' contributions in Buffalo, Maher set up two design studios for graduate and undergraduate students and established the A.E. Minks Archive Project at Assembly House 150 in Allentown. The building houses the Society for the Advancement of Construction-Related Arts, of which UB is one of the community partners. It was founded by Maher to provide experiential learning opportunities in the construction and design fields. The students researched Minks' life and career in Buffalo and in Hungary. They scoured city documents to trace the history of occupants and owners, pored over the ink drawings, created a scrapbook and assembled a street grid showing Minks' influence. They also built models showing cross sections of five buildings they identified as being of particular importance, even adding bricks dug up from the Jefferson Avenue Shul site for that representation. Fabricated building details were also made to re-create and better understand Minks' work. The original drawings are contained in a cabinet that once stored church vestments when the building was the Immaculate Conception Church, with each drawer labeled by a Minks building. "The whole project has been like a neo-noir detective story," said Michael Gac, a graduate student who also holds a bachelor's degree in history. Gac helped find the histories of Minks' clients by foraging through marriage, birth, death and immigration records. The search included tapping into the Buffalo History Museum and the downtown public library. "We took what started as several drawings in a bucket, and not only found out if these buildings existed but took it further to connect Buffalo to Budapest and Germany," Gac said. "Buffalo is rediscovering itself, but we have forgotten a lot of the stories that helped make this town great," Gac said. "There are more stories like this, and more planners and architects and others whose stories have just been lost to time." While the students were able to put together a biographical sketch of Minks, they didn't know for a while what he looked like. That changed when two watercolor drawings and a photograph emerged. "It was exhilarating," Gac said. "He looked exactly like how I thought he would – a German man in his 50s, balding head, big beard. He was looking stoically out the window, with his son wearing clothes from that time period." Ellis Island records Graduate student Lukas Fetzko said it was exciting whenever their research hit pay dirt. "I spent the whole night going through Ellis Island records, and finally found the immigration record of his family and the number of suitcases they had, and the names they were going by," Fetzko said. The students thought Minks might be Jewish, but discarded that notion when they found he wasn't buried in the Jewish section of Forest Lawn Cemetery. They also spoke with current and past owners of buildings, including Grace Meibohm, whose grandfather commissioned Minks to design a building for his framing business at 326 Connecticut St. on the West Side in 1909. An installation of the A.E. Minks Archive Project will be open to the public in early 2020, Maher said. |
