GPS CITY GUIDE ← All cities
The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Little Rock (CLG-4) leaving Naples Bay, Italy, on 31 July 1967, while serving as flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
Photo: PH2 J.E. Higgins, U.S. Navy / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain

Audio walking tour

Buffalo Audio Walking Tour

Queen City Stroll: Erie Echoes and Gilded Grandeur

Stops
42
Core walk
42 of 42 stops within 1.5 mi of the center
Farthest stop
1.4 mi from the center
Start
Canalside
42 stops GPS-triggered audio No app download Free to start
Start the tour → Download on iOS

Highlights

  • The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Little Rock (CLG-4) leaving Naples Bay, Italy, on 31 July 1967, while serving as flagship of the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
    USS Little Rock

    Museum ship USS Little Rock, the last surviving Cleveland-class cruiser of the 27 completed for the United States Navy, sits here in Buffalo in front of you. She was the first U.S. Navy ship named for Little Rock, Arkansas.

  • A view of Buffalo City Hall from Niagara Square, Buffalo, NY. The McKinley Monument is visible in the foreground.
    Buffalo City Hall

    Buffalo City Hall towers over you at 65 Niagara Square, 32 stories of Art Deco completed in 1931. Towering above you is the 32-story Art Deco skyscraper completed in 1931 by Dietel, Wade & Jones, a 398-foot, 121.3-meter edifice that ranks among the largest and tallest municipal buildings in the United States and one of the tallest in Western New York.

  • [Built in 1895-1896, this Chicago School-style thirteen-story skyscraper was designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler for the Guaranty Construction Company. It was initially commissioned by Hascal L. Taylor, whom approached Dankmar Adler to build "the largest and best office building in the city,” but Taylor, whom wanted to name the building after himself, died in 1894, just before the building was announced. Having already had the building designed and ready for construction, the Guaranty Construction Company of Chicago, which already had resources lined up to build the project, bought the property and had the building constructed, with the building instead being named after them. In 1898, the building was renamed after the Prudential Insurance Company, which had refinanced the project and became a major tenant in the building after it was completed. Prudential had the terra cotta panels above the main entrances to the building modified to display the company’s name in 1898, upon their acquisition of a partial share in the ownership of the tower. The building became the tallest building in Buffalo upon its completion, and was a further refinement of the ideas that Sullivan had developed with the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, which was built in 1890-92, and featured a design with more Classical overtones, which were dropped with the design of the Guaranty Building in favor of a more purified Art Nouveau and Chicago School aesthetic, and with more intricate visual detail, with the ornate terra cotta panels cladding the entire structure, leaving very few areas with sparse detail. The building is an early skyscraper with a steel frame supporting the terra cotta panel facade, a departure from earlier load bearing masonry structures that had previously been predominant in many of the same applications, and expresses this through large window openings at the base and a consistent wall thickness, as there was no need to make the exterior walls thicker at the base to support the load from the structure above. The building also contrasts with the more rigid historically-influenced Classical revivalism that was growing in popularity at the time, and follows Sullivan’s mantra of “form ever follows function” despite having a lot of unnecessary detail on the exterior cladding and interior elements. The building’s facade also emphasizes its verticality through continual vertical bands of windows separated by pilasters that are wider on the first two floors, with narrower pilasters above, with the entire composition of the building following the tripartite form influenced by classical columns, with distinct sections comprising the base, shaft, and capital, though being a radical and bold abstraction of the form compared to the historical literalism expressed by most of its contemporaries, more directly displaying the underlying steel structure of the building. ..]
    Prudential (Guaranty) Building

    Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler completed the Guaranty Building, first called the Prudential Building, here in Buffalo, New York, in 1896, and its 13 floors climb in front of you. This is the 13-floor building, 167 feet (51 m) high, envisioned by Buffalonian businessman Hascal T. Taylor as a speculative office called "The Taylor Building" in the developing downtown district.

  • The platforms at the DL&W Station
    DL&W station

    Inside the former Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad terminal, which doubles as the NFTA Rail Maintenance Yard, you have reached the DL&W station, a Buffalo Metro Rail stop on the first floor beside the Buffalo River. This station replaced the former Special Events station and was the first expansion of the line since it was completed in 1986.

  • Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, Buffalo New York
    Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site

    Delaware Avenue brings you to number 641, the Ansley Wilcox House. This is the very room where, after the assassination of William McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt took the oath of office as President of the United States on September 14, 1901.

All 42 stops

How it works

1

Open on your phone

No download. Works in Safari or Chrome.

2

Start walking

Head toward any historic stop. No fixed route.

3

Audio plays itself

Walk within range of a stop and the story begins.

Open the Buffalo tour →

Three stops free. No account needed.

Gear for walking Buffalo

We earn a commission from purchases made through these links.