File:WBEN radio transmitter building, Grand Island, New York - 20210818.jpg

English: The WBEN radio transmitter building at 1791 Bush Road (corner South Parkway), Grand Island, New York, as seen on a dreary afternoon in August 2021. This pint-sized edifice beautifully exemplifies the Streamline Moderne style that was at the height of its popularity at the time of its construction (1941): note its unmistakable sprawling massing and horizontal orientation, the minimal use of ornamentation that's nonetheless marked by stylized Classical tropes such as the projecting brick columns between the windows on the sides, whose concrete base is suggestive of pilasters, and - of course - the drum-shaped corner rotunda on which the façade is centered, with characteristic curved glass-block windows, stubby pots flanking the low-slung central stairway, and the station's call letters engraved in a period-appropriate typeface along the frieze. WBEN is the second-oldest commercial radio station in Buffalo - it signed on the air in September 1922, four months after WGR, originally using the call letters WMAK - and was a charter affiliate of the CBS radio network. It took on its current broadcast frequency (930 kHz) and current call letters in 1930, at the time of its purchase by the Buffalo Evening News, who would own the station for the next 47 years. The station became known as a pioneering innovator in American broadcasting, partnering with Schenectady station WGY in 1928 to demonstrate an experimental early version of television, launching America's first commercial FM radio station (W8XH) in 1934, and offering a radio news facsimile service for a short period in the late 1930s. It was also an incubator for broadcasting talent that would later go on to national fame: future Tonight Show host Jack Paar was the morning DJ at the time of this building's completion.