File:John Cook House, Buffalo, New York - 20210615.jpg

English: The Cook House, 501 Niagara Street, Buffalo, New York, June 2021. Here we have a splendid early example of what's known locally as a "Buffalo double", a type of two-family house that was a common element of the local housing stock and that speaks to the forward march of construction technology of the era, and specifically the newfangled technique of "balloon framing". This new method of wall construction, using long continuous framing members ("studs") to which flooring elements are appended, opened the door for large wall elements to be essentially mass-produced in a central factory, transported to the site, and assembled like puzzle pieces, making for a much faster construction process while still maintaining decent structural quality. A side effect of this was a relative uniformity in house design, with simplified versions of popular styles of the time - Queen Anne in this case; Colonials, Craftsman, and American Foursquare variations would appear later - appearing side by side in essentially identical iterations. The house seen here was built for John Cook (1825-1890), the German-born (as Johann Koch) owner of the saloon next door. He died in 1890, only five years after the house was completed, but his family remained there for decades thereafter. After her marriage, his daughter Rose moved upstairs with her new husband William Rose (1863-1953; yes, upon her marriage her legal name became Rose Rose), while the last Cook child to occupy the downstairs unit was John's unmarried daughter Clara, who moved out in 1929.