File:Wilcox Mansion (Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site), Delaware Avenue, Allentown, Buffalo, NY - 52641123598.jpg

English: Initially built circa 1837 to serve as the officers quarters at the former Poinsett Barracks (also known as the Buffalo Barracks), this house served as the Commanding Officer’s Quarters and Post Surgeon’s Quarters for the post, facing a large parade ground that stood in the middle of the block bounded by Allen Street, Main Street, Delaware Avenue, and North Street, with the parade ground being ringed by other buildings. Built at a time of diplomatic tensions with the United Kingdom in the late 1830s, known as the Caroline Affair, the barracks were named for Joel Robert Poinsett, Secretary of War under Martin Van Buren, and former Ambassador to Mexico, whom introduced the Poinsettia to the United States in the 1820s. Poinsett had visited Buffalo during the Caroline Affair and, as a result, the new barracks were named in his honor. In 1839, President Martin Van Buren dedicated the barracks in a ceremony held at the site, and, in 1840, the house was the home of future United States President Zachary Taylor’s son-in-law, whom was the Post Surgeon for the Poinsett Barracks. It is also believed that, in 1841, the post was visited by United States President John Tyler, and in 1843, by former United States President John Quincy Adams, and future United States President Millard Fillmore during its time as the barracks. In 1841, construction began on the more strategically positioned Fort Porter, which stood on the site of the present-day eastern landing of the Peace Bridge along the Niagara River, with the base being completed by 1845 and the Poinsett Barracks being subdivided and absorbed into the growing city of Buffalo, with Franklin Street and Pearl Street being run through the middle of the site. This is the only surviving building from the former military post. A total of 13 US Presidents, including Lincoln, Grant, McKinley, Cleveland, Taft, Wilson, and both Roosevelts, plus the Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis, have been in some way associated with the house during its history.

After the decommissioning of the barracks and subdivision of its land, the house was purchased in 1847 by Judge and former Buffalo Mayor Joseph Masten, whom renovated the house under the direction of architect Thomas Tilden into the Greek Revival-style structure seen today, adding a large portico facing Delaware Avenue, and adding a small two-story service wing to the rear on the former front facade, dubbing the house “Chestnut Lawn.” The house was purchased by Albert P. Laning, a politician, in 1863, with the house’s address at this time finally being changed from Franklin Street to Delaware Avenue, with Laning adding a carriage house to the side of the mansion.

In 1883, the house was purchased by Dexter Rumsey and given as a wedding present to his daughter, Mary Grace Wilcox, upon her marriage to lawyer Ansley Wilcox, with the Wilcox family owning and inhabiting the house from 1883 until 1933. The Wilcox family removed the 1840s rear service wing in 1896, under the direction of architect George Cary, replacing it with a larger rear wing to accommodate their growing family and to reflect their growing wealth and prominence in Buffalo society, with several interior rooms also being reconfigured and renovated at this time, including the conversion of the house’s two parlors, dating to its time as a duplex for officers in the 1830s, into a large library.

Ansley Wilcox was a close friend and political ally of Theodore Roosevelt, having met while working on a special commission on civil service reform under then-New York Governor Grover Cleveland in the 1880s, and both men having pushed to create the Niagara Reservation, now Niagara Falls State Park, in 1885. As a result of their close friendship, a major historical event took place in the house’s library on September 14, 1901 when Theodore Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 26th President of the United States in an impromptu ceremony presided over by Federal Judge John R. Hazel immediately following the assassination of William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. The inauguration was attended by 50 people, including cabinet officials, dignitaries, and family members, as well as the Wilcox family. The reason the inauguration was held so quickly after McKinley’s death was due to the heated political environment surrounding the presidency at the time, with McKinley having been assassinated by an anarchist, reflecting the growing societal tensions of the turn-of-the-20th Century in the United States. Other political leaders assassinated within the few years surrounding the death of McKinley included Kentucky Governor William Goebel in 1900, the only sitting governor of a US State to ever be assassinated in office, New Mexico Superintendent of Public Instruction José Francisco Chaves in 1904, US Representative John M. Pinckney in 1905, and former Governor of Idaho Frank Steunenberg in 1905, as well as an attempted assassination of Theodore Roosevelt himself in 1912.

After the Ansley and Mary Wilcox passed in the 1930s, the house’s contents were claimed by relatives or auctioned off, and in 1938 the house was heavily altered and renovated by Oliver and Kathryn Lawrence to become a restaurant, with the removal of many interior walls and features, including the main staircase, and removal of the 1860s carriage house to make way for more parking, with the restaurant, known as Kathryn Lawrence’s Dining Rooms, being one of the most popular eateries in Buffalo until it closed in 1959 due to changing tastes, the death of Kathryn Lawrence, and the commercialization of Delaware Avenue. Following the closure of the restaurant, the house was threatened by demolition, with a movement by concerned local citizens beginning in 1963 to save the historic mansion, with it finally being listed as a National Historic Site in 1966, owing to its significance in being the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration in 1901, as well as its significant history as the last surviving portion of the old Poinsett Barracks, which had several significant historical figured associated with it, with the house being restored to its circa 1901 appearance between 1969 and 1971. In 2009, the carriage house, demolished in 1938, was rebuilt as a visitor center for the museum, and the adjacent bank building constructed in 1960 was demolished to restore the south lawn of the house in 2012.

The house features a painted brick exterior, front gable roof with a two-story ionic portico on the symmetrical five-bay west facade, six-over-six double-hung windows, a palladian attic window on the pediment above the portico, side gables that once formed the ends of the front wing of the house, which was originally a duplex, with corinthian pilasters at the corners of the protruding wing to the south, an oriel window on the first floor of the south facade, a brick east wing built in 1896 with a rear gable roof and an asymmetrical rear facade, an enclosed portico on the north facade, and a rooftop widows walk atop the roof of the original section of the house. To the north of the house is a carriage house, rebuilt in 2009, which features a painted brick exterior, hipped roof with gabled wall dormers to the north and south and a cupola atop the center of the roof, and a glass vestibule connecting to the rear wing of the adjacent house. Inside, the house features restored rooms that have been reverted back to their state as of 1901, when it was home to the Wilcox family, undoing decades of alterations during the building’s use as a restaurant between the 1930s and 1950s.

The house, which is devoid of its original context to the north and south due to commercial development encroaching on the area during the mid-20th Century, is very well preserved and has been thoroughly restored, today serving as a museum, with a restored interior, grounds, and exterior.