File:Lafayette Court Building, Buffalo, New York - 20201130.jpg

English: The Lafayette Court Building, 465 Main Street, Buffalo, New York, November 2020. A Frankenstein's Monster of a building, the bulk of what you see here today was built in 1903 as the new home of the William Hengerer Company, a longstanding department store previously located down the street at 268 Main. Architect Cyrus Porter was responsible for the original Beaux-Arts Neoclassical design of the building, which was all but obliterated by a 1938 modernization which yielded the more sleek and streamlined façade still visible at right on the third through seventh floors. Hengerer's (and its successor company, the Rochester, New York-based Sibley's) continued occupying the building until about 1986, after which the building was purchased by a local development company for conversion to offices. It was at that time when the top floor and clock tower were added and the storefront windows on the first and second floors altered, with the overall effect that Postmodernism is the dominant architectural style to be seen on the building today. Abundant are the requisite Modernized takes on Classical design tropes: interspersed between the aforementioned storefront windows are paired pilaster strips suggestive of the Doric order, the tower is topped by a quartet of pediments, and the upper-floor windows facing Main Streets come in the form of stylized segmental arches.