Linwood Avenue - Table of Contents

Henry  J(ackson) Warren House
350 Linwood Avenue
Buffalo, New York

Architects:

Green & Wicks

Built:

1894
Footage:
5,000 sq. ft.

Style:

Colonial Revival
Henry J. Warren:
Text below
Status:
Linwood Local Historic District






House Residents
Excerpts from "At Home With Anthony Chase," by Donna Hoke.
Published in Buffalo Spree, Spring 2011, pp. 53


... the property was first purchased by Henry Jackson Warren, superintendent of the Buffalo branch of Barber Asphalt & Paving (the company later formed by Warren and his brothers went on to pave one third of the roads in this country)...

Warren moved in with his wife and three children...

"I think of Henry Jackson Warren's decidedly anti-labor stance in the context of Buffalo's astounding labor history. He actually went to prison for violating the eight-hour work law! Meanwhile, two Irish girls were living on the third floor and catering to all the family's needs, undoubtedly for deplorable wages."

After Henry's untimely death in 1906, the residents of 350 were no less fascinating. Lieutenant William Henry Faust and his wife, Frances Todd Patterson - the granddaughter of George W. Patterson, former New York State Lieutenant Governor and U. S. Congressman - and Jacob Joseph, a bank president, rented the house before the widow Warren sold it in 1906.

It was purchased by John G. Wickser, nephew of then mayor Philip Becker, President of the German Insurance Company and the Buffalo Commercial Insurance Company, and former New York State Treasurer.

Wickser's son, Philip John, became a prominent attorney "who would go onto collect and donate the James Joyce collection to the University at Buffalo, and give work to the Albright Knox, Chase shares.

In 1916, Wickser sold the house to society man and Buffalo Foundry Company president Henry D. Miles and wife Alice Dunbar, daughter of the spectacularly wealthy Charles Dunbar, Henry's boss. ("The patrician WASP Dunbars, with a Jewish son-in-law in 1915!" Chase marvels.)

Alice's sister bought 334 Linwood and after Alice and Henry's daughter Mildred married Louis Jaffe, future dean of the University at Buffalo Law School - in the very living room where Chase now sits - they moved into 444, just up the block. "All three shared a chauffeur, a retired Negro League baseball player named Peter Edwards," Chase says. "I have been in contact with Louis and Mildred's son, Miles Jaffe, who remembers being in this house as a little boy, Peter Edwards throwing baseballs at his head, going from house to house. He tells me, 'My grandfather's wealth still fuels us.' They're very conscious that they're from Buffalo, but when Buffalo changed, they took their wealth with them." (Miles Jaffe lives in Massachusetts, where his parents bought a thirty-acre compound in Martha's Vineyard after Louis became a member of the Harvard Law Faculty.)

When her widowed mother, Alice, died in 1950, Mildred Miles Jaffe sold 350 to Dr. Lawrence L. Grenolds, a dentist. Chase surmises that the notches he's found in the woodwork once accommodated dental equipment, and that the backyard parking lot - enviable for a city dweller who doesn't covet a garden - was installed to accommodate patients. At least two other dental practices operated out of the house into the seventies before 350 became a permanent rental property, ultimately leased by Chase and his business partner, Javier Bustillos, founder and executive director of Buffalo United Artists.


Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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