File:Dr. Alexander Main Curtiss House, Buffalo, New York - 20200501.jpg

English: The Alexander Main Curtiss House, 780 West Ferry Street, Buffalo, New York, May 2020. Built in 1895 from a design by James A. Johnson (who was then in partnership then with James Marling, formerly of Silsbee & Marling, but would soon be one half of the locally prominent firm of Esenwein & Johnson), this two-and-a-half-story mansion sports a semicircular portico supported by a quartet of graceful Ionic columns, and, as a contrast, Corinthian pilasters flanking either side of the main façade. The steep roof pierced by broken-pedimented dormer windows adds a French Renaissance element to the otherwise resolutely Neoclassical style. A physician, Alexander Main Curtiss (1856-1923) was born in Utica, graduated from Cornell Medical School in 1880, and launbched a successful second career in business upon his arrival in Buffalo, serving variously as a director of the Third National Bank of Buffalo and as a trustee of the Fidelity Guaranty and Security Company. Curtiss lived here until 1913; subsequent owners include attorney and business magnate Evan Hollister (1875-1943), who lived there until 1922, and Robert Borthwick Adam II (1863-1940), son of the successful Buffalo merchant of the same name who occupied it until a year before his death. Since 1982, the Alexander Main Curtiss House has served as Buffalo's Ronald McDonald House children's charity, providing free lodging to families of chronically hospitalized children who cannot afford other accommodations.