English: The Buffalo Club, 388 Delaware Avenue at Trinity Place, Buffalo, New York, May 2021. One of Buffalo's finest examples of French Second Empire-style residential architecture (it was originally a private home), the main portion of the building dates to 1870 and is the work of an unknown architect. Witness here all the prerequisite characteristics of the style proudly on display: a strict bilateral symmetry on the main façade, dormer windows topped consecutively with keystone-studded round arches and pediments, rectangular window heads in cut stone whose light gray tone provides for a handsome color contrast vis-à-vis the red brick of the façade itself, and - of course - a mansard roof, straight-sided and faced with fishscale tiles in slate, projecting slightly from the exterior wall and bracketed by a modillion cornice. Exquisite as well are the twin bay windows on the ground floor, bedecked with stylized engaged columns between the panes and topped with elegant wrought-iron balconets matching those on the south elevation facing Trinity Place. The north and west wings of the building (seen at right and far left, respectively) date to 1907 and 1958, respectively: the latter sports a decidedly utilitarian design courtesy of the prolific local firm of Green & Wicks, with jack-arched windows, a green-patinaed copper cornice and belt course near the top, and a flat roof, while the former is actually a better emulation of the original design despite being newer, with a seamless continuation of the cornice and the stone belt course separating the first and second floors and identical window heads, though with a noticeably different tone of brick. The building was constructed as home of Stephen Van Rensselaer Watson (1817-1880), one of Buffalo's most wealthy and prominent citizens of his day. A native of the Albany area, Watson's diverse business interests in Buffalo included real estate speculation (especially in what's now called the Fruit Belt and Near East Side), banking (he was a founder of both the Erie County Savings Bank and Manufacturers & Traders Trust Company), lake-going steamers and freighters, an eponymous grain elevator at the harbor, and the city streetcar system, whose mid-19th century consolidation and expansion he oversaw. Watson lived in the house for only six years, during which his fortune was ruined by the Panic of 1873; from 1876 through her death nine years later; it served as the home of Mary Jane Pratt (1815-1885), widow of Samuel Fletcher Pratt (1807-1872), co-founder of Pratt & Letchworth and one of the principal financial benefactors of Watson's business interests. As for the Buffalo Club, it's one of the oldest existing (it dates to 1867) business and social clubs of its type in the United States, and the only one to count two former U.S. Presidents - Millard Fillmore (also the club's founding president) and Grover Cleveland - as members. The Watson-Pratt House is the fourth building to house the club's facilities, having passed into their hands in 1887. A detailed rundown of prominent members over the years would be pointless, as essentially every Buffalonian to have attained importance since the club's inception has been one, but also historically noteworthy is the fact that the clubhouse actually served for a few months in 1901 as the de facto seat of the U.S. government, when the administration of William McKinley was granted use of the premises as their headquarters during the president's hoped-for recovery after his shooting at the Pan-American Exposition.