Artspace Buffalo: A Community Revitalization Project

A century after they enjoyed their first wave of popularity, electric vehicles are back. Advances in technology sparked car makers toreintroduce “E-Vs” to the market in 2011, with seven new models to choose from.

     But electric vehicles actually have been around since the 1830s, when Dutch inventor Sibrandus Stratingh created an electromagnetic cart. From Stratingh's invention evolved cars that were manufactured in Buffalo in the early 1900s. President William McKinley was even whisked away in an electric ambulance to the hospital after being shot at the 1901 Pan-Am Exposition.

     David Torke, a local activist and blogger who has led historic tours for Preservation Buffalo Niagara, said the Mid-town section of Main Street was full of automobile production at the time. Electric cars were manufactured by the Buffalo Electric Carriage Company, which struggled through merger and ownership changes to become the Babcock Electric Carriage Company, then the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company. 

     Torke said, although Buffalo was the City of Light, the company suffered from many of the same challenges that still impede the industry today.

     “You had Frank Babcock's electric vehicles priced at about $3,000 apiece, which in today's dollars is equivalent to $50,000,” Torke said. “Down the street a little bit, Henry Ford was mass producing automobiles at $500 apiece, which is equivalent to about $10,000 today.”

     This price disadvantage limited the company's customer base to the wealthiest consumers.

     “Of course, Ford wins because he was producing cars at a price point that his employees could purchase, and that was not the case with Frank Babcock,” Torke said. “His market probably included the doctors and professionals one block away on Linwood Avenue, where Buffalo's finest positions lived at the time.”

Also like today, the company’s cars had limited power and range compared to their gasoline competition. But what was life-changing to the industry, according to Torke, was the 1913 introduction of the electric starter, which eliminated the need to manually crank-start gasoline cars. He said this technical advancement instantly elevated gasoline cars to the same easy level of operability as electric models and allowed gasoline to secure its dominance for the future.

     The Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company manufactured and sold electric vehicles at the corner of Main and Northhampton streets until 1916, when it went out of business. The building had periods of use and vacancy since. In 2005, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and converted by the Minneapolis-based Artspace Projects Inc. into residential lofts and commercial space for artists and arts organizations.

It was then that the century-old former manufacturing plant became a catalyst for other high-level investments in the neighborhood. Among the development sparked by the $17 million conversion of 1219 Main Street into Artspace Buffalo Lofts was the $10 million conversion of the Packard Automobile building at 1325 Main Street into the Packard Apartments, the $6 million conversion of St. Vincent’s Orphanage at 1140 Ellicott Street into the Health Sciences Charter School and the restoration of nearby Coe Place and its Queen Anne-style homes.

Artspace is the nation’s leading non-profit real estate developer for the arts. Its mission is to use the arts as an economic development engine. So it was especially fitting to reuse a building originally purposed to manufacture electric cars.

     “The City of Buffalo originally contacted us to do a project and Buffalo scored very high on all our criteria,” said Wendy Holmes, Artspace Senior Vice President of Consulting. “We did due diligence on four or five sites. This site on Main Street was very important to the community at the time because it was at the end of the one subway stop in Buffalo, it was a perceived dividing line between a traditionally African-American community and a Caucasian community, it was near a growing medical campus and it was also in the midst of a very poor neighborhood where they wanted to have some positive economic change.”

Holmes said Artspace has completed 30 similar projects across the United States and 14 others are in various stages of development. Matthew Meier, the project leader on Artspace Buffalo Lofts for HHL Architects, said the National Trust for Historic Preservation toured the property during its October conference in Buffalo.

     “Buildings back then were built for permanence in such a way  that today allow us to do a variety of things to them and still make them really big contributors, not only in the landscape of the street but the community,” Meier said. “Not only did Artspace see a good building for adaptive reuse, but it was an opportunity to  begin to have art fix some of the ills of the community.”

     The Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company building is historically significant for its architecture and engineering design as an intact example of an early generation automobile factory built of steel and reinforced concrete, which would later become known as the “daylight factory.”

     “Daylight was such a critical component of being able to work,” Meier said. “You had to make big tall windows that would open so you could get cross ventilation and allow daylight to go deep in the building. That’s the perfect formula for artists. We saved virtually everything we could. The structure was basically left as is.”

     Site Manager Tracy Petock said the Artspace Buffalo Lofts are nearly 100 percent occupied by artists and individuals involved in Buffalo’s arts community, and there is a very long waiting list to lease an apartment there. Rents are based upon income, which helps struggling artists, and there are many common areas where residents can gather, share ideas, and exhibit their work.

     “Not only is this an apartment building, but I think the sense of community is enhanced because everyone has that common thread of being an artist,” said Petock. “It’s the heartbeat of the building.”

     “I think the thing that we’re most proud of is how engaged that community of artists is in the neighborhood and in their own sense of collaboration and maturity,” said Holmes. “They’re programming the gallery more, they’re doing more things in the community, they’re doing all the things that we hoped could happen as a result of these artists being together in one place. It’s a pretty phenomenal community that I think sometimes the rest of the country doesn’t know a lot about.”

     Buffalo is full of similar buildings begging for reuse. Holmes said the company is currently having quiet discussions about a second project in another neighborhood of the city and working to sign a new non-profit arts and science organization to occupy the commercial space on the first floor of Artspace Buffalo Lofts beginning in 2012.!