File:William J. Hayes House, Buffalo, New York - 20220313.jpg

English: The William J. Hayes House, 825 Auburn Avenue, Buffalo, New York, March 2022. A contributing property to the NRHP-listed Elmwood East Historic District, this two-and-a-half story wood-framed residence was designed by the local architectural partnership of Boughton & Johnson and is a rather unusual example of the Colonial Revival style, with its symmetrical façade, subtle but noticeable Classical detailing (pediments crown the front porch and the dormers in the upper floors; the dentil row below the roof eaves is echoed by raking dentil rows on each aforementioned dormer pediment). The house once boasted additional detailing suggestive of a Queen Anne influence, but much of this has been removed, save for the shingle siding and twin second-floor bay windows. The house was built around 1897 (the earliest record of it is a classified advertisement in the Buffalo Commercial dated July 8 of that year) as a speculative venture by the real estate firm of John Otto & Son, who touted it for sale and rent as a "fine new residence... modern in every respect". The eventual purchaser was financier William Justice Hayes (1858-1948), who served as an executive with the Niagara Bank (and also moonlighted on the board of the Buffalo Foundry Company) for the duration of his relatively short tenure at the address. Some time after selling the house in 1902, he moved back to his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania and went to work as an examiner for the state and federal Banking Departments. The house was sold and resold to a rapid turnover of residents in the ensuing years, some of whom included young automobile industry investor Henry Foster Spaulding (1878-1903) and Michigan Central Railroad freight agent Carl Howe (1870-1946), both of whom were in and out before the house turned ten years old.