One of Delaware Avenue’s finest commercial buildings is for sale. Plaza Group has put the Huyler Building at 374 Delaware on the market with a $3.5 million asking price. The four-story building has 30,000 sq.ft. of space and a 26 car parking lot. For nearly eighty years it was the home of Pitt Petri importers.
From the listing:
The Huyler Building was constructed in 1922 amidst a business resurgence on Buffalo’s famed Delaware Avenue. The elegant Classical Revival façade of the Huyler Building befits Buffalo’s rich architectural history. The Huyler company (once the largest and most prominent chocolate maker in the United States) apparently sought to build its flagship store in Buffalo on the city’s most fashionable commercial corridor. Similarly it was probably no coincidence that the next owner, Pitt Petri import shop, with its selection of elegant, tasteful and high-end goods, also elected to make its home on fashionable Delaware Avenue.
The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012. From the nomination form:
Designed for the nationally-prominent Huyler’s confectionary and chocolates company by Buffalo architect Harvey S. Horton, the Huyler Building is an excellent example of a 1920’s reinforced concrete commercial building. It is cloaked with a decorative Classical Revival detailed artificial stone, and the “Huyler’s” logo is modelled into the decoration. From the late 1800s until the Great Depression, the New York City-based Huyler’s was the nation’s most prominent chocolate maker.
The development of the Huyler’s Building coincided with the widespread growth of commercial activity along this area of Delaware Avenue. Although Buffalo had three earlier Huyler’s candy and confectionary shops by this time (366, 556 and 660 Main Street), the Huyler Building appears to have been designed and conceived as the ‘flagship’ location for Huyler’s company in the city, housing an elegant restaurant rather than a smaller luncheonette counter typical of the other locations.
Prior to the construction of the Huyler Building, this parcel on Delaware contained a large three-story brick house comparable in size and scale to the adjacent Buffalo Club and Charles F. Sternberg House, now the Mansion on Delaware.
Despite the intention, records are unclear whether the building was ever actually occupied by the Huyler’s company though the company had signed a lease for space. The initial first floor tenants in the building, listed in the city directory of 1927, were recorded as Pitt Petri Importer, Inc. and an American Radiator Company showroom.
As the home of the Pitt Petri importers for nearly 80 years, the building is associated with the glory-days of high-end retail on Buffalo’s Delaware Avenue. Pitt Petri first opened on Allen Street in 1924. One year later the store moved to 569 Delaware before settling into 378 Delaware in 1927. Pitt Petri was known for high-quality decorative and art goods, retailing home products such as silverware, crystal, china and other goods. The company closed its doors in 2011.
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