File:House at 505 Walden Avenue, Buffalo, New York - 20201105.jpg

English: The apartment house at 505 Walden Avenue (corner May Street) in Buffalo, New York, November 2020. Standing three and a half stories in height, the house is an example of the Queen Anne style that was near the end of the apex of its popularity at the time of construction (1909), but it's quite an unusual manifestation of the style: the requisite multiple gables are arranged side by side on the lateral elevations rather than intersecting with each other in front, and the left side of the façade displays a unique stepped massing, with floors projecting consecutively outward as they go upward. Bay windows are another motif that appears repeatedly, projecting and otherwise, and the right side of the façade is dominated by a two-story porch and balcony, balustraded and framed by pilaster strips and a Classical pediment. In contrast with the origin stories of most area homes of similar size and degree of architectural detail, 505 Walden was from the start a multifamily house occupied by working-class residents. It appears to have originally been built and owned by the New York Central Railroad, who used it to house employees (logically enough, as the massive Frontier Rail Yard lies just a few blocks away); among its early residents were locomotive engineers Edward Ott (1873-1947) and Wilbur Olewine (1856-1925) and switchman John C. Shafer (born 1861). The New York Central seems to have sold the property about 1923, as the resident recorded as living there that year, Anthony Schramba (1888-1949), was a plasterer and bricklayer by trade rather than a railroadman.