File:Anthony Walkowiak House, Buffalo, New York - 20210627.jpg

English: The Anthony Walkowiak House, 1016 Humboldt Parkway at Northampton Street, Buffalo, New York, June 2021. This is a fine representation of a popular design trope in Craftsman-style residential architecture in which a sprawling side-gabled roof - whose eaves widely overhang the exterior walls, as is de rigueur - is pierced in the front by a wide, hip-roofed dormer, with the main entrance off to the side. Notice also the prominent lunette window underneath the gable, with a spiderweb muntin that cribs from the contemporaneously popular Colonial Revival. Longtime owner Anthony Walkowiak (1869-1950) has quite the interesting biography: born under humble conditions in Pobiedziska, Poland, he emigrated to the U.S. as a young man and got married in 1890 to the former Rosalia Pitass, whose uncle, Rev. John Pitass, was one of the foremost figures in Buffalo's Polish-American community, being the founder and head pastor of the enormous St. Stanislaus Catholic Church. Walkowiak took on a career as a liquor wholesaler and, with his wife and growing family, enjoyed a standard of living that was unusually high by the standards of Polish Buffalo. Walkowiak had this house built for him in 1920 on one of the last vacant lots on tony Humboldt Parkway, in a prime location just across the street from what's now called Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. His wife Rose died soon afterward, in 1922, but he was soon remarried to her younger sister, Agnes. What the onset of Prohibition meant for Walkowiak's career isn't entirely clear: the 1920 census lists his occupation as "importer of wine" despite the passage of the 19th Amendment earlier that year, so it's to be assumed that he kept his business alive for some time supplying Communion wine to St. Stan's (which remained a legal usage of alcohol under the Volstead Act). However, in the New York State Census of 1925 and the federal one of 1930 his occupation was listed as "unemployed" and "retired", respectively. Nonetheless, the Walkowiaks were able to continue living in such relative luxury - they employed a staff of domestics at their home throughout the Prohibition period - that one might speculate whether he may have turned to bootlegging. At any rate, Anthony lived in the house until his death, and his widow sold the place a couple years later.