File:Peter Metzinger House, Buffalo, New York - 20200901.jpg

English: The house at 246 Doat Street, Buffalo, New York, as seen in September 2020. Built in 1916 and located in the Schiller Park neighborhood on the East Side of the city, this is a good example of the style of house referred to locally as the "Buffalo double": two-and-a-half-story, partially prefabricated wood-frame houses whose construction process involved the mass-production in a centralized facility of ready-made and sometimes partially assembled components of the building, which are then shipped to the construction site and assembled according to a limited range of standardized designs which are often chosen by prospective owners out of a catalog. Buffalo doubles were popular in working- and middle-class areas like Schiller Park due to the fact that they could be built quickly and cheaply; this one sports a design that's a simplified take on the Queen Anne style that was then at the end of its period of popularity (witness the prominent front gable, second-floor bay window, and the addition of an enclosed front room on the ground floor modifying what was once a requisite asymmetrical portico) and was originally a single-family residence, though many others were (and almost all eventually were) divided into separate upper and lower units. The house's original owner was Peter Metzinger (1867-1925), a switchman for the local street railway, but as usual for this type of residence, he didn't live there long; the 1920 U.S. census records him as living on the West Side as a boarder with a family named O'Brien. Subsequent owners include Wladyslaus (Walter) Grazeck and his wife Irene née Levandowski, the photographer's great-grandparents, who the 1940 census records as residing there along with their daughter Heleadore, the photographer's maternal grandmother.