The motor freighthouse. Not yet recognized by bureaucrats or architects as "historic," or having space-defining roles. Designed for transfer between rail and local cartage, just before Interstate Highway System led to boom in over-the-road trucking and longer trailers. Vernacular buildings on Black Rock waterfront prior to covering with vinyl aiding, false shutters in 1998. All substance, no frills, elemental form. Even partially boarded-up, Railway Express Building at Buffalo Central Terminal reveals the mystique of raw, rhythmic forms flooded with light. Industrialism as metaphor. Artpark artisans' shops harken back to idealized rural industry. Note "jerry-rigged" light masts, careful composition. Building is only 30-feet deep, but fills role cheaply and well.

The Cobblestone District consists of a block of occupied industrial and warehouse buildings and stone block streets which define two additional blocks of open land. Further, in an amended application approved last year, the South Park Avenue segment was extended to Michigan Avenue and its access to the Buffalo River. With careful planning (no evidence of that yet), all that space can be knitted together with some modest buildings and still have plenty of room for larger structures, parking, etc. The best hope would be for the district to evolve into a “neighborhood commercial” zone. To the extent that new businesses starting in the district keep the needs of its neighbors in mind - Old First Ward and Marine Drive residents, office workers within the district and the Marine Atrium - and structure their businesses that way, there will be modest success. The charm and mystique of areas like the Cobblestone District is in its bare bones, no-frills architecture. It is about buildings with work to do. The way the buildings look was determined partially by the way the builders thought an industrial building should look or how materials and construction methods dictated. So you have some 1920s buildings with reinforced concrete frames resting on basements of limestone blocks, even though the concrete could just have well gone down into the soil, because that’s how the earlier timber-framed industrial buildings looked. You also have a lot of buildings of a certain width that need light and air to penetrate the interior: they got a monitor roof, with the center portion elevated to allow windows. It was not until the advent of florescent and high-pressure vapor lighting and high-volume air circulation equipment that manufacturing and distribution buildings lost their monitors and, for that matter, their side, clerestory windows, too. So, industrial buildings with windows are finite and getting fewer every day. And they are getting more attractive to a broad public as symbols of character, grit, adventure, and verve. Entire restaurant chains are based on the “brick warehouse” theme. When they can’t find one, they build an ersatz one, like Don Pablo’s on Elmwood. Even plank doors with cross bracing – strapping – are rarer and more evocative still. A modern pasta chain, Fazooli’s or some such, constructs panels meant to evoke strapped doors and hangs them – under an industrial light fixture – on outside walls as kind of sign. Every building in the Cobblestone District contributes to its character and historic evolution, right up to the 1950s motor freight house on Mississippi St. Its clerestory windows, wooden doors, and sweeping canopy are direct descendants of the 19th century rail freight house it abuts. The Cobblestone District is a story of brick, stone, concrete and corrugated metal. New buildings designed with these materials and of a small scale are needed to fill in the South Park streetscape. That street, and the Cobblestone District as a whole, will then have the funky verve that people find so irresistible. Industrial vocabulary used on Burlington, Vermont, waterfront. Architecture is complemented by benches of unadorned slabs of locally quarried granite. Round windows, "architecty" forms reveal newness of structure. Designed for micro businesses, it acts to make waterfront pathway comfortable.