File:Former George Heintz furniture store, Berner Hardware, Bison Products, Fran's Cabinet & Display - Buffalo, New York - 20201016.jpg

English: As seen in October 2020: the three-story brick building at 713-15 William Street (corner Shumway Street) on the East Side of Buffalo, New York is a fine example of the Romanesque Revival style of architecture as applied vernacularly to commercial buildings. The classic features of the style are on display in the varied fenestration - the windows are topped with round arches on the top story, in the form of Syrian arches on the ground floor of the side elevation, and with rough-textured stone lintels on the second floor of the side elevation - and multi-layered corbelling in the brickwork just below the roofline is also apropos. Most interesting among the architectural characteristics, however, are the Classical flourishes on the second floor of the façade: pairs of windows are interspersed with engaged Ionic columns as well as framed on the sides of the building by veritcal bands of brick fashioned into Ionic pilaster strips. What were once floor-to-ceiling storefront windows facing William Street have been bricked over. Constructed in 1896, the building was home over the first half-century of its existence to a pair of family businesses that were passed down from father to son. It was built to house the second location of George Heintz's furniture store, the main location of which was on Broadway in the building that was most recently home to Laux Sporting Goods. Heintz's store was also notable for selling baby carriages and general hardware. Beginning in 1923, the William Street branch of the store was being operated by George's son Michael, while George himself remained in charge of the original location. They went out of business in 1930, a victim of the Great Depression, and the location was taken over by Fred Berner's hardware store, specialists in architectural elements such as roofing, glass and beaverboard, and one of Buffalo's few authorized dealers of Blackburn brand varnishes. Berner's moved out in the mid-1940s in favor of a new location a few blocks closer to downtown, by which time it, too, had come under the management of the original owner's son. Subsequent occupants include Bison Products (whose signage still appears on the façade), a sausagemaking concern founded by Italian immigrant Umberto Battistoni that operated here through 1965 and is still in business at a new location on Dingens Street, and most recently Fran's Cabinet & Display.