Charles W. Goodyear House

Charles W. Goodyear House
Charles W. Goodyear House in 2012
General information
Type	Brick
Architectural style	Châteauesque
Location	888 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY
Completed	1903
Design and construction
Architect	Green & Wicks

The Charles W. Goodyear House is located at 888 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York, part of the Delaware Avenue Historic District, a federally designated historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. The Châteauesque house was designed by prominent Buffalo architect Edward Green, of the Buffalo architecture firm Green & Wicks, and was completed in 1903 at a cost of $500,000 (equivalent to $13,328,000 in 2016). The home was built for Charles and Ella Goodyear. Goodyear was a founder and head of several companies including the Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad, Great Southern Lumber Company, and the New Orleans Great Northern Railroad Company, as well as a director of Marine National Bank, and General Railway Signal.

The exterior of the two and a half story house is brick trimmed with stone. The mansard roof includes a row of dormers with pedimented tops with a festooned motif that runs along the roofline above a dentilled cornice. The principal entrance is on the north (right) side of the house denoted by a large arched doorway, bordered on each side by stone urns. The east façade facing Delaware Avenue has a one story porch with columns, that was later bricked in.

The walls of the main hall are covered with red Italian brocade (woven fabric) and with pilasters and cove (concave-profile) moldings of carved American walnut. Over the mantle of the marble fireplace in the main hall is a six-foot marble relief, weighing two tons, called "Life" by Karl Bitter. The relief won the gold medal at the Saint Louis Exposition, 1904 and is placed on a foundation extending to the cellar.