The Gateway Building, 3556 Lake Shore Road, Hamburg, New York, November 2021.

A paragon of the International Style of architecture erected in 1958 at arguably the apex of that aesthetic's popularity, this was at the time of its construction the largest single-occupant industrial office building in the Buffalo area, with over 100,000 square feet of office space situated on an 80-acre lakeside lot that, according to coverage of the building's groundbreaking in the Hamburg Sun and Erie County Independent, was fondly "remember[ed] as the site of employee vegetable gardens at intervals in the last 40 years".

Seven stories in height, the building is faced in glazed brick variously colored blue and gray, and boasted an innovative air conditioning system that cooled the interior using water pumped into a settling basin from Lake Erie and later discharged into nearby Rush Creek. The owner was the Bethlehem Steel Company, who moved their executive brass here from the previous, so-called Old North Office Building - a majestic, three-story, Beaux Arts-style structure that was a landmark along Fuhrmann Boulevard in Lackawanna until its demolition in 2013 - and also added an auditorium, event and exhibition space, and sumptuous executive dining rooms. Bethlehem Steel used the building until the 1980 shuttering of its Buffalo-area operations, and the building houses a mixture of office tenants today.

    -  Andre Carrotflower (online December 2024)