File:Brisbane Building, Lafayette Square and Main Street, Buffalo, NY - 52686142518.jpg

English: Built in 1894-1896, this Beaux Arts and Renaissance Revival-style building was designed by M. E. Beebe and Son for James Brisbane and James Mooney. The site was previously home to the Arcade Building, built by the Brisbane family in the early 1850s, and which burned to the ground in December 1893. The building was originally known as the Mooney and Brisbane Building, but was re-named the Brisbane Building in 1906 when James Brisbane bought out James Mooney’s share in the building. The building was briefly the largest commercial office building in the city, until the larger Ellicott Square Building was completed less than a year later. The interior of the building was configured to house a single large retail shop on the ground floor, an arcade with sixteen retail spaces on the second floor, and offices above on the third through seventh floors. The lower section of the building, by 1908, was home to the Kleinhans Men's Clothing Store, which was housed in the basement, half of the first floor, and the arcade on the second floor, with the other half of the first floor being occupied by the Faxon, Williams, & Faxon Grocery and the S. H. Knox Five and Dime Store. The upper floors were home to various commercial office tenants.

The building consists of a two-story base that takes up half of the block the building stands on, being bounded by Lafayette Square or Clinton Street to the north, Main Street to the West, and Washington Street to the east, with an H-shaped five-story office building on top, with light wells to the north and south of the central circulation core of the building. The central section of the north facade of the first two floors originally featured an entrance to the building from Lafayette Square, with arched openings, corinthian pilasters, and a gable parapet, which was removed when the building was renovated in the 20th Century. The base is clad in modern granite panels with multiple rail shopfronts, with the only original cladding being the brick pilasters flanking the entrance doors to the building’s lobby on the east facade. Above the first floor, the exterior is very well preserved, with the second floor featuring large Chicago-style windows separated by corinthian pilasters that cover most of the facade, curved corner windows, and a decorative blind arch above the west entrance, flanked by decorative relief panels, the name “Brisbane Building” emblazoned on the facade above, and a cornice at the top of the second floor. The east entrance is better preserved, with the original brick pilasters, transom, reliefs, keystone, and cornice being intact. The third through seventh floors are clad in cream-colored brick, with one-over-one double-hung windows, corinthian pilasters, curved windows at the corners, a cornice at the sill line of the sixth floor windows, decorative relief panels, arched windows on the seventh floor, belt coursing with egg and dart motif at the top of the seventh floor, and a bracketed copper cornice at the top of the parapet that encloses the building’s low-slope roof. The building’s parapet originally featured gabled sections, decorative balustrades, and urns, all of which have been removed in subsequent renovations. Inside, the second floor originally featured skylights at the light wells of the floors above, with stained glass at the skylights, but the interior was modified when the building was renovated in the latter part of the 20th Century, leaving very little historic material.

The building today is home to multiple commercial office tenants, as well as a few retail tenants on the ground floor, and is very well preserved on the exterior, minus changes to the first floor and the original north entrance from Lafayette Square and west entrance from Main Street. The building’s exterior was partially restored in 2009, though it did not re-create the original appearance of the west entrance that was altered. Additionally, the building’s parapet has been modified and simplified with the removal of decorative elements above the cornice.