Buffalo, known as the Queen City in the western New York is popular for the skyline, now globally attracting the tourists for the architecture tourism.
Buffalo is a city of commercial, residential and institutional buildings by the most revered trio of architects — H.H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. They all built during the Gilded Age.
The tourism in Buffalo is echoed for architectural tourism with the opening of Hotel Henry Urban Resort Conference Center, which is an upscale hotel located about 3 miles north of downtown. This historic urban resort has a bulky monolith, built in the 1870s, as the Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, now converted into a resort.
This hotel has the monolith exterior almost look like an excellent scene of any horror movie, now is the domain for wedding events or conference.
The local preservationists took this dilapidated asylum property from the Government and partnered with an hotelier and formed this architectural excellence. This also has navigated the restrictions of the National Historic Landmark, after that launched a stylish “urban resort and a conference center.”
The high-ceiling rooms are fully wired and dressed in cutting-edge modern. Two or three former patient lodgings have been combined to form each new guest room. The wide and spruced-up corridors lead to small common areas and then to larger open areas in the towers. The inn occupies a third of the asylum, which at peak capacity housed about 2,000 patients and staffers.
The old asylum had a progressive in its design. For fire-safety reasons, the wings were separated into “pavilions” and the light was thought to be therapeutic for patients, so windows are enormous. The windows are so tall in high-ceiling guest rooms that pull-down blinds are formed with remote-control. There is also an acre of green space abound outside the window.
Buffalo has the best park system. This city has 20 parks accessible from any part of the city. The Olmsted Park and Parkway System is the landmark of the green space of the city. It was constructed in 1868 by Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux for making this space affordable for the patients their family. Now, after the conversion of the hotel, it will be the best spot for the tourists. It was also first attempt in America to lay out a coordinated system of public parks and parkways.
