By Staff Reporter
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Grover Cleveland dedicated its drill hall. Woodrow Wilson, Ella Fitzgerald and a young Joe Louis all drew crowds under its roof. It is believed to be the oldest building still standing anywhere that hosted professional ice hockey.
Now City Hall says the Broadway Barns at 201 Broadway will probably come down.
Concrete panels began falling inside the city’s Department of Public Works garage late last month, and Mayor Sean Ryan issued a certificate of emergency Oct. 5. The Chronicle reported Saturday on the scramble to rescue the city’s plow gear. The bigger question is what Buffalo loses if the building goes, and whether anyone will weigh that before a wrecking permit is signed.
“Historical or not”
Deputy Mayor Benjamin Swanekamp has been blunt. Asked last week whether the building would be demolished once its equipment is cleared out, he told Buffalo Toronto Public Media, “speaking bluntly, probably, yeah.”
“Historical or not, I don’t know what it would take to make that building stabilized and safe,” Mr. Swanekamp said. “It certainly is historical, but there have been under previous administrations a number of attempts to look at future uses for the site. I would imagine the cost to stabilize that will be extraordinary.”
He said the city is waiting on structural engineers, WBEN reported. No engineering report has been made public.
Council Member Mitch Nowakowski of the Fillmore District agreed with the deputy mayor. “To me, the Broadway Barn has gone so far in rapid deterioration, I don’t think the history of it could hold significance to the point where it is in such disrepair, it jeopardizes the health and safety of our own municipal workers,” he told WBEN.
He also put the blame where it belongs. “That’s the tall tale sign of the City of Buffalo; either we’re going to invest in ourselves and we’re going to take care of issues, or we’re going to allow them to languish and have everything fall on everyone’s head,” Mr. Nowakowski said.
What is actually standing
The yellow-brick garage most drivers see on Broadway is a 1948 wrapper. Behind it is a much older building.
According to the landmark application filed by Preservation Buffalo Niagara, the complex has three layers. There is one remaining wall of a New York State arsenal built in 1858. There is a large armory drill hall added in 1884. And there are front, side and rear additions from 1948 to 1952, built after a fire destroyed most of the arsenal. The arsenal’s original facade survives as an interior wall.
The drill hall was the first building in Buffalo big enough for a full regiment to drill, the group wrote. After the city converted it to the Broadway Auditorium, it served for more than 20 years as Buffalo’s main event hall, until Memorial Auditorium opened in 1940. The application singles out the sawtooth dormers and clerestory windows added for the auditorium, carried on a steel truss system it called “a significant engineering accomplishment at the time.”
The city has not said publicly whether the failed panels sit in the historic drill hall or in a later addition. WKBW reported only that they came down on the second floor, in the room above the repair bays. That distinction matters. A collapse in a postwar addition and a failing 1884 truss are very different problems, with very different price tags.
A plan that was waiting on a move
This is not the first time the building has been written off. What’s different is that, three years ago, the city had a plan to save it.
Buffalo put the 5.3-acre site out to bid in 2022. In 2023 it chose a development team to turn the drill hall into an indoor sports complex, with a community center, a cafe and affordable housing, according to the University at Buffalo, whose planning students’ 2021 studio report helped shape the project.
“It’s important for us to bring buildings like this online. To take dark and make it light. What’s dead and make it alive,” Arthur Hall of Hallmark Planning & Development, a co-lead developer, told Spectrum News 1 in 2023.
But there was a catch. The developers had to wait until the city found a new home for its trucks and salt. Three years later, the trucks are still there.
Preservationists wanted more. Tim Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo History, Architecture & Culture, told Spectrum he wanted a publicly funded sports complex that would expose the hidden facade. “The armory then becomes a source of pride again for the neighborhood, a foundation on which to build rather than something that is actually keeping the neighborhood down,” Mr. Tielman said.
Preservation Buffalo Niagara’s landmark application went to a Buffalo Preservation Board hearing scheduled for April 2023. The Chronicle could not find any public record showing that the Common Council ever designated the building. We have asked.
The replacement campus
The building’s fate is tied to a project a few miles east. In October 2025, the Scanlon administration bought about 59.7 acres of former railroad land at 1000 Bailey Ave. and 250 Baitz Ave. for $5 million, mostly with an Empire State Development grant, WBEN reported. The site is a brownfield. WGRZ reported last month that a new public works complex there is projected to cost $92 million, according to an account in Modern Public Fleet.
The Ryan administration kept the plan but changed how it would be paid for. A new local development corporation would own the land, claim brownfield tax credits, sell bonds and lease the campus back to the city. The city’s website lists two board meetings this year, on April 1 and Aug. 27.
In the meantime, the city is negotiating an emergency lease to move crews out of Broadway. Mr. Ryan described the conditions to WGRZ. “We have chain-link up, below the eaves, so pieces of the roof and the support system don’t fall on workers,” he said.
The questions before a teardown
The mayor has tried to slow demolitions before. In March, Mr. Ryan imposed a 60-day moratorium on most demolition permits. The city’s announcement said lost buildings had hurt “neighborhood stability and historic character.” The order, which expired May 18, made exceptions for emergencies.
When the moratorium was announced, Preservation Board Chair Gwen Howard said, “The neighborhoods throughout Buffalo provide some of the most comprehensive and intact historic fabric of our community, and have the largest lasting effect on community history and character.”
Before the city decides, a few questions deserve public answers. Will the engineers assess the 1884 drill hall and its trusses separately from the 1948 additions? Will the Preservation Board get a look at any demolition request? Could the arsenal facade or the trusses be saved even if the rest comes down? And is the 2023 development team still in the picture?
Before the 1884 drill hall comes down, the city owes residents an engineer’s report they can actually read.
Featured image: The Broadway Auditorium at 201 Broadway, as shown on a postcard from about 1914. Anonymous, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.
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