File:Buffalo Niagara Convention Center, Franklin Street, Buffalo, NY - 52686065965.jpg

English: Built in 1978, this modern Brutalist-style convention center replaced several older commercial buildings on Franklin Street and Pearl Street between the Walbridge Building and West Mohawk Street and Genesee Street. The building is clad in concrete panels with rough ribs, cantilevered exterior walls with chamfered corners between circular concrete columns and shed roofs on the Franklin Street facade, a cantilevered roof with a tall concrete-clad parapet surrounding the low-slope roof of the building, a row of clerestory windows above the geometric walls on the Franklin Street facade, storefronts on the ground level, and a contemporary glass and metal signboard support structure above the main entrance on the Franklin Street side of the building. The building extends into the former right-of-way of Mohawk Street and Genesee Street to the north, and features a trapezoidal shorter rear wing that extends into the former Genesee Street right of way at the north end and helps draw visitors north along an exterior plaza to an entrance at the south end of the building along Court Street, with the facade along Pearl Street being clad entirely in rough ribbed concrete panels and featuring service entrances and loading docks, undulating along the length of the building. The building was renovated and expanded in 2010, and as of 2022-23, is undergoing another renovation, which involves alterations to the Franklin Street side of the building. Though a good example of Brutalism, the building’s imposing length, largely unbroken massing, and blocking of various former street connections does not lend itself well to the surrounding blocks, and the building is left with very little room for expansion due to being hemmed in by historically significant and economically productive properties. It is likely that, if expansion is required or desired in the future, a new convention center will be built elsewhere.