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Hotel Buffalo, Washington Street DEMOLISHED for the baseball stadium Postmarked 1913 Ellsworth Statler opened a restaurant in the newly erected Ellicott Square Building in1896. Its success led to a hotel two blocks from the Ellicott Square Building - Hotel Buffalo, pictured below. In 1919, Statler hired George B. Post & Sons to design a nineteen-story hotel - said to have been the largest building in the state outside of New York City - on Delaware Avenue at Niagara Square. After Statler built the hotel on Delaware, he changed the name of the hotel on Washington to Hotel Buffalo; hence, the difference of the name on this postcard. Ellsworth M. Statler died in his suite at the Pennsylvania Hotel in New York of double pneumonia on Apr. 16, 1928. He was one of the best known hotel proprietors in the United States. During the Pan American Exposition Mr. Statler started a restaurant in the Ellicott Square building and one on the Exposition grounds. He built the first Statler hotel at the corner of Swan and Washington streets. Then he branched out and a string of Statler hotels were built by him in other cities. When Niagara Square had been decided upon as a civic center, Mr. Statler bought the. old Fillmore mansion and built a large hotel thereon, calling it Hotel Statler, and changing the name of his first hotel on the corner of Swan and Washington streets to Buffalo hotel. He also built the Erlanger theatre. Mr. Statler was born in Somerset County, Pennsylvania on October 26th,1863. He was an officer in various associations and a member of several clubs, as well as a 33rd degree Mason and a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor of France. - Source: "Buffalo Historical Society Publications," Volume 30, 1930

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