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The Vaux Barn Is A Local Landmark!

We have great news in our local landmark making efforts!

As of 2:37pm today on April 15th, 2025, the Vaux Barn Local Landmark has been APPROVED!!!! Thank you to the Buffalo Common Council for moving this forward. We are thrilled! You can read about our multi-year effort to complete this local landmark application here. 

Local landmarking is a special preservation tool because it ensures the Buffalo Preservation Board will oversee any exterior changes made therefore adding an important layer of protection to our most historic sites across Buffalo.

Buffalo has a long history of great architects coming to Buffalo and showing off their best work. Calvert Vaux came to Buffalo with Frederick Law Olmsted, and together, they designed the Olmsted Parks and Parkway System that we cherish today. Vaux has one remaining structure he designed left – this barn. We are thankful to the Buffalo Common Council for agreeing with us that it is indeed local landmark worthy. We are excited to see what the future holds for the Vaux Barn!

Bernice Radle, Executive Director of Preservation Buffalo Niagara.

Preservation Grant Opportunities Available Now

The National Trust provides grant funding for historically significant buildings! Numerous grant opportunities are currently available, and we’ll do our best to keep you informed.

Deadlines are quickly approaching for these grant opportunities:

February 14: African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund National Grant Program

February 24: Descendant and Family Stewardship Initiative

March 3: Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund for Historic Interiors

March 3: Johanna Favrot Fund for Historic Preservation

March 14: Conserving Black Modernism Grant Program

Save Our Sacred Sites Update: Two Local Landmarks Move Forward in Buffalo

Great News! 🎉

Today, the local landmark status for St. Michael’s Roman Catholic Church (651 Washington St.) and All Saints Roman Catholic Church (205 Esser Ave.) was approved at the Legislative Council meeting!

We are so grateful for continued support from the City of Buffalo Common Council. We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to Councilman Joseph Golombek and Majority Leader Leah Halton-Pope for their support in making this happen. Most importantly, we want to thank the parishioners of both churches for their dedication, passion, and commitment to preserving the history and legacy of these beloved landmarks.

As a reminder to our church goers and owners, achieving the City of Buffalo local landmark status means means you are eligible to apply for grant funding for repairs and renovation needs via the New York Landmarks Conversancy for Sacred Sites funding and the Fund for Sacred Spaces.

The research and status also helps to pave the way to getting the churches on the National Register of Historic Places, which has brought larger funding to churches throughout our region as we have recently seen with the Universal Unitarian Church on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo.

If you know or work within a church that is looking to submit a local landmark application, please reach out. We would love to help. As a non profit, we can research and apply at a reasonable cost to you and that helps keep our organization going, too!

St. Michael’s Church

Next Up on the Local Landmark Effort – Saint Martin of Tours at 1140 Abbott Rd. in South Buffalo. The City of Buffalo public hearing is March 11th at 1pm in the City of Buffalo Common Council Chambers. If you want to show your support, email info@pbnsaves.org and we will be happy to share those with the Council.

All Saints Church

Save Our Sacred Sites Update: Attention Niagara Falls, NY !

As part of our ongoing Save Our Sacred Sites efforts, we know there are several Catholic Churches closing in Niagara Falls, NY. We also know there are many other Churches that are at risk and/or have recently closed.

We want to be a resource for you and your Church. While our tools are limited due to time and financial restraints, we want to help if we can. For example, once approved, our Local Landmark effort allows Churches to apply for important funding through NYS for repairs! We can do those local landmark applications for you – for a small fee to cover our costs of research and application.

So if you have a Church in your community that you want to see saved, please fill out this google form to let us know of the details and we will get back to you!

Also, if you didn’t catch it, we did a great lunch and learn with Monte Anderson, a Dallas-based Developer who has renovated several churches, and our Executive Director, Bernice Radle, on repurposing church spaces. You can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp6f7r0KLUY

Love,

Emily, Bernice, Laura, Constance, and the rest of the PBN team.