Another incredible opportunity has been squandered this week on the east side. Late Sunday night a fire broke out as arsonists damaged 94 Northampton beyond repair. It’s easy to write off this loss as “just one more” but this house had an incredible amount of character and great potential. The home is just one block away from the recently saved and rehabilitated St. Vincent’s Orphanage, steps away from Artspace, and extremely close to the ever expanding Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus.
The house unfortunately suffered severe neglect and vandalism over the years, but still retained much of its original architectural integrity. With so many assets within walking distance it wasn’t a great stretch of imagination to see the house reborn and occupied by medical students, urban pioneers, or many others. 94 Northampton will never get another lease on life as the bulldozers and wreckers rush to deliver more of Buffalo’s heritage to the landfill.
East side resident and community advocate David Torke has documented the building for years and convinced Jim Comerford to remove it from the demolition list last year, here and here. The director of real estate, John Hannon even recommended that the Common Council make the house “homestead eligible” allowing for a sale of the property for $1 to an eligible buyer.
Torke searched for interested parties to rehab the home, worked with the neighborhood block club to keep the house secure and showed this amazing heritage property numerous times. Many were interested, none were able to carry out the project. According to Torke, an 18 year resident of this East Side neighborhood and author of the fixBuffalo blog, “these heritage properties endured decades of neglect and the remaining structures need and deserve community wide attention and support.”
From fixBuffalo: Before the fire and historical images