By Donna

We had a beautiful day to tour Buffalo today. As I write this, I am listening to Marina and Len perform “76 Kazoos Led the Big Parade” on their new kazoos (see Marina’s blog entry for explanation).

We started at Buffalo’s magnificent art deco city hall. This building is truly a grand example of the style at its best. The observation deck was closed, but we snuck into the top level of offices which had been deserted apparently for renovation, but with no workers in sight. There was a great view of Lake Erie and the city, although it felt a bit creepy walking around such a decrepit place with peeling paint and remnants of office lives past. The council chambers were stately and full of marvelous art deco detail. The lobby and entry were awesome with bas reliefs and sculptures reminiscent of “worker’s unite” themes.

In front of the city hall is a monument to President McKinley, who was assassinated in Buffalo. The monument looks like a miniature Washington’s monument.

After city hall, we went to visit Q-R-S Piano Roll company. This place was unbelievable. It is the last manufacturer of paper rolls for mechanical player pianos (which themselves are no longer being manufactured by anyone). At 10:45am, we had missed the official tour time of 10am (nobody actually had taken the tour), so I had to beg the rather gruff manager to let us see the place (the fact that the earlier tour hadn’t taken place was “irrelevant”). He relented in the end, and assigned us Mike, the production manager, who seemed ecstatic to have a diversion, and willingly shared with us every single bit of knowledge he had about creating piano rolls. A surprising amount of the process is manual, from cutting out the chads (remember those?) for the master roll, to creating a stencil to print the lyrics on the roll.

The most amazing thing was that the place was full of equipment from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s that was all being controlled by Apple IIe’s. When Mike found out that we had a connection to the business, he was thrilled, hoping that we would know how to come up additional RAM (memory) cards for it! We found it just wild that this factory still existed and had an active business.

Next we went to the Wilcox house where Teddy Roosevelt was inaugurated as president after McKinley’s assassination. A very nice docent (absolutely everybody in Buffalo is extremely nice … other than the general manager of Q-R-S, although I suppose you could say he was nice after all) showed us around. We saw the parlor where the ceremony was held, and a few other rooms of the mansion which were redone. Our favorite item was a lamp with a porcelain shade that was carved such that when the light was off, you saw nothing, but when the light was on, you saw an elaborate image that seemed to include multiple shades of grey.

After lunch (a much better lunch today …. a Greek restaurant recommended by the Nice Docent), we left town for the south to visit the Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, Greycliff Estate. They are in the process of renovating this country estate that sits right on the bluff overlooking Lake Erie. It is full of classic Wright touches, including heavy horizontal lines, natural materials, and lots of glass. Indeed, it often reminded me of my home growing up, which was a Wright copy. We had another Nice Docent who was very knowledgeable about the family and the house.

Before returning to Buffalo, we visited the Eden Kazoo Factory. Since Marina described it so well, I won’t add any more.

We’ve just returned from a fun dinner in Allentown, a trendy section of Buffalo. Actually, it was not all that trendy. But we did manage to find one trendy restaurant, particularly if trendy means small portions. Actually, these portions were miniatures, and the place was called Sample. I couldn’t figure out if you were supposed to have eaten first or not. The food was marvelous. What little of it we had, that is.

-- Donna