The former Buffalo Smelting Works, located at 23 Austin Street, is a particularly exquisite and rare surviving example of waterfront industrial architecture in the Black Rock neighborhood. The paired building was constructed as the neighborhood became a thriving industrial area during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

The Buffalo Smelting Works demonstrates elements frequently seen in industrial architecture of its type, with a steel truss roof system topped with roof monitors, and is embellished with detailing in the Romanesque Revival taste, with segmental and Roman arched windows, as well as a repeating motif of oculus windows.

Built for the Michigan based Calumet & Hecla Mining Company, the building is additionally eligible for the information about the nationally successful company and its Buffalo operation. As a prominent industrial processing plant, the Buffalo Smelting Works enjoyed nearly three decades of success in the copper smelting industry, attracting much business to the region.

A period of significance has been set at 1891, the year of the building’s original construction, until 1920, when Calumet & Hecla sold the property to the American Radiator Company.