An excerpt from F. Scott Fitzgerald in Buffalo:

1898 -1901

Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, on September 24, 1896, to Mollie and Edward Fitzgerald.

In 1898 Mr. Fitzgerald's furniture manufacturing business failed, and he was hired as a soap salesman with Proctor & Gamble in Buffalo. Scott was a year and a half old when the family arrived here. They headed for North Street, and moved into the Lenox Apartments, now the Lenox Hotel, at 140 North Street.

Lenox Hotel

Originally built 1896 as an apartment building, the Lenox was converted into a hotel in 1900, probably to take advantage of the Pan-American Exposition crowds. It offered an electric carriage service exclusively for its guests. The Lenox survives today as one of the last hotels in Buffalo.

Very elegant in 1898, the apartment building was a very fashionable place to live. It had a front porch and huge stone pillars that had been carved.

Mansions surrounded the hotel. Next to the hotel (where Walgreens is now located) was the Root House by McKim, Mead and White, one of the most influential and prestigious architectural firms in the country. Across the street from the Lenox and the Root were two more mansions by McKim, Mead and White: the Metcalfe House (demolished 1980), and the Williams / Butler House at the corner of North Street and Delaware Avenue, perhaps the most beautiful residential building in Buffalo.

Says Brian Dyche, the manager of the Lenox in 1994, "It [the Lenox] was for people who maybe spent the summer in the Hamptons, the winter in the city. The rooms, most of them, were full suites with kitchens, breakfast nooks, servants' quarters."

Sources:

• Victorian Buffalo, by Cynthia Van Ness
• The Hotel With Heritage (Lenox Hotel official home page)

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Photos and their arrangement © 2002 Chuck LaChiusa
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