File:Hoole-Davis House, Buffalo, New York - 20220227.jpg

English: The Hoole-Davis House, 400 Linwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, February 2022. Erected in 1886 from a design by the local architectural firm of Silsbee & Marling, the house is one of three that the firm built on commission that year for real estate speculator Edward Smith. Compared to the creative detail inherent in their work on other homes along Linwood, the design here is a relatively restrained, yet still handsome, example of the Queen Anne style with noticeably lighter massing and more in the way of Classical detailing: note the paired Tuscan columns and spindle balustrades adorning the full-width front porch. The shingle cladding on the upper stories comes in a variety of forms: fishscale, half-cove, and standard square. It's perhaps an effect of the house not having been built with a particular owner in mind that it was sold and resold more often than neighboring homes: after its completion, it was purchased in short order by coal merchant Albert J. Hoole (1843-1927), but he only lived there for four years. Subsequent owner William Horatio Davis (1838-1907), an industrialist whose interests ran the gamut from coal to phosphate mining to real estate to the presidency of the International Ferry Company, stayed on a bit longer: from 1891 until his retirement to Fort Erie around 1904.