File:Robert H. Jackson Federal Courthouse, Niagara Square and Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY - 52685123822.jpg

English: Built in 2010-11, this contemporary building was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox to replace the smaller 1930s Michael J. Dillon Federal Courthouse on the east side of Niagara Square, along with consolidating federal offices scattered throughout Downtown Buffalo. The site of the courthouse was formerly home to several smaller buildings which were demolished to make way for the courthouse, the most notable of which were the circa 1927 Colonial Revival-style Erlanger Theater, built by the Statler Hotel company to serve guests at their flagship hotel across the street, and the circa 1852 Italianate-style Balcom-Chandler House, which was the sole remaining residential structure in the vicinity of Niagara Square, along with several less notable buildings and surface parking lots. The building was named for former Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, whom is, so far, the only supreme court justice to have been from Western New York. The building features a facade covered in glass curtain walls with curved faces, some of which feature vertical ribs, with a tall concavely curved facade facing Niagara Square, and the longer rear facade covering a more opaque facade behind it, with punched window openings. In front of the building, enclosing a plaza, is a wedge-shaped entry pavilion structure clad in glass with the words of the constitution etched into the glass facade, symbolic of the transparency of the government operations within the building. The east facade along Delaware Avenue is partially clad in stone panels, with a stone spire tower capped with glass representing a lantern rising from the southeast corner of the building’s tower portion, and a glass-clad section to the north of the tower featuring opaque gray panels at the spandrels and clearer ribbon window openings, creating differential transparency to the building’s exterior. The building functions as the main office building and courthouse for the federal government in Buffalo, and is the latest significant addition to Niagara Square, which is lined with many other architecturally significant buildings.