File:Schmitt-McGowan House, Buffalo, New York - 20220321.jpg

English: The Schmitt-McGowan House, 117 Huntley Road, Buffalo, New York, March 2022. The Treehaven or Judges' Row neighborhood has arguably the densest concentration of Minimal Traditional homes (a 1930s and '40s-era stylistic trend perhaps best described as a stripped-down version of the historic-eclectic styles popular in the 1920s) inside Buffalo's city line, and the Schmitt-McGowan House is unique among them in that the style from which it takes heaviest influence isn't the Tudor or Colonial Revival, but the French Eclectic. The steeply-pitched hipped roof, the segmentally-arched second-floor windows that jut out above the eaves in imitation of dormers, the tall chimney stack on the north side elevation, and the light color of the façade all attest to the aesthetic. Fittingly, Cleveland Hill Properties used this as a model home, with an ad campaign running in local papers in the spring and summer of 1937 that invited curious Buffalonians to "come out... for a pleasure trip of inspection" in hopes that they might "appreciate the advantages of this community of reasonably priced single homes" enough to make a purchase. Said purchaser was Julius Joseph Schmitt (1897-1970), owner of an eponymous meat-packing plant and longtime officer of the Buffalo Trap & Field Club who lived in the home until some time in the early 1960s. An even more illustrious subsequent owner was Thomas F. McGowan (1925-1997), a prominent figure in Republican politics who steadily climbed the ladder from Assistant District Attorney to State Senator and finally to the bench of the State Supreme Court (ergo, one of the judges to whom "Judges' Row" owes its name). McGowan lived in the house from the late 1960s until shortly before his death.