Renaissance Revival style

Excerpt from
Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture
By Richard O. Reisem
Reprinted with permission.

See also: Excerpts - Classic Buffalo: A Heritage of Distinguished Architecture

Thomas J. McKinney inherited a fortune in oil and spent much of it on this incredible house. To build this Renaissance villa, he spent $1million, which translates to over $10 million today (1999). After his enormous investment, Mr. and Mrs. McKinney lived in the house only four years before being killed in an automobile accident in Orlando, Florida in 1933.

At his Lincoln Parkway address, there was garage space for the four Rolls-Royce automobiles that McKinney owned.

The house is constructed of Roman brick over poured concrete walls. Today, it is considered to contain some of the foremost wood carving in the United States, possibly exceeded only by Mrs. Horace Dodge's house in Detroit. The woodwork contract alone -- executed by the firm of E. M. Hager and Sons, Buffalo wood specialists -- came to over $100,000, which is equivalent to more than $1 million today (1999). A crew of 20 expert woodcarvers imported from Germany, Switzerland, and Italy worked two years to accomplish the prodigious effort utilizing rare woods from all over the world.