Delaware Avenue and Johnson Park Southwest
The Hotel Touraine


1894 atlas showing highlighted location of the present Touraine Apartments.


262 Delaware, location of the addition to the Touraine Hotel. Image source: Picture Book of Earlier Buffalo

The house above was occupied by John Ganson and John Sibley when it was a double, as seen above, c. 1850. By 1914, the home had been enlarged and remodeled into the Livingston Apartments. They would be demolished in the early 1920s for an addition to the Hotel Touraine. The residence partially visible at right was that of Henry Lansing, later the Kent family. It was demolished in 1900-01 to make way for the Hotel Touraine.

Here is the same perspective in 2011.


Esenwein & Johnson rendering of the Hotel Touraine, 1901. Image source: BECPL

The Buffalo firm of Esenwein & Johnson was hired by developers Mead, Crandall and Corey to design the apartment house at the corner of Delaware Avenue and Johnson Park. There was some criticism that a hotel on Buffalo's finest residential avenue would be innappropriate, partner James A. Johnson replied, "I don't see where the blemish comes in. There is not a building in Buffalo that has a more expensive interior than this will have, and its exterior is fully as handsome as that of the Lenox in North street. In any event that section of Delaware Avenue is no longer in the swell residential district. Its decadence began long before this apartment house was thought of, and is due to causes independent of it. Property owners cannot get anything by renting houses in that section, and their only resource is to build structures of this kind."


The Hotel Touraine shortly after its opening. Image source: private collection.

As it was originally constructed, the Touraine had 86 apartments, each equipped with its own bathroom finished in red tile work, marble and golden oak. There were also provisions for separate lavatories for male and female servants. By the time it opened, nearly half of the well-lighted, "E" shaped building was rented to those who would use it as a residential hotel. Within a year, the Touraine was contracted to H.C. Griswold of New York City, a professional manager of residential hotels and apartments. When it opened with the label "hotel," the Touraine featured units from one room to five-room suites. It boasted of being "completely electrified." The architects of this Gothic Revival building also designed its public rooms (below).

A 1914 advertisement describes the hotel thus:

The Hotel Touraine is the only hotel on the main motor-way of Buffalo - Delaware Avenue.

The Touraine is in the neighborhood of the best shops and theaters. But it has quiet, fresh air, sunlight, trees and growing things about it, all conducive to good health and sleep o' nights.

The hotel is rarely beautiful, with its solid, hand-carved woodwork and Italian marble. It has ten floors of comfort, cleanliness and convenience.

In the Touraine cafe, we serve at modest prices, the purest foods, properly prepared. Private dining-rooms, charming as the Little Trianon, are available for parties and wedding breakfasts.

Room with bath, $2.00 per day and upward. For each extra person in room, $1.00 additional.

Two, three and four room apartments, suitable for families and touring parties, $4.00 per day and upward.

Garage just across the Avenue.

 

John McFarland Howie

The Touraine enjoyed an excellent reputation and made the most of its Delaware Avenue location in its marketing. A long-time manager, John McFarland Howie, presided over the hotel's golden age in the 1910s and 1920s. It was he who first suggested in 1914 to Cornell University president Jacob Gould Schurman that a professional school to train hotel managers and staff be established. Despite resistance, such a school was opened at Cornell in 1922. (It was not well-funded however, until another Buffalo hotelman, Ellsworth Statler, agreed to donate significantly in 1927.)

The Touraine received a four-story addition in 1923, also designed by Esenwein & Johnson. The maximum number of hotel rooms at its peak was 250.


Images from a newspaper pictorial from the 1920s. Image source: WNY Heritage


The American Hotel Corporation took over operations in 1938 and did some remodeling. In 1945, it was sold to Detroit investors, and sold again in 1950. A new cocktail lounge was added in 1953. By January, 1964, it was in foreclosure and was sold to "Delaware, Inc" for $110,000 for possible use as apartments. It was sold again in 1967. In 2007, The Touraine Apartments were purchased for use as 104 income-restricted apartments. A nightclub occupies part of the ground floor.

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