Stanford White designed the Williams-Butler House, now the Jacobs Executive Development Center, the roughly 16,000-square-foot Buffalo mansion in front of you, built between 1896 and 1899. It was designed by Stanford White of McKim, Mead and White for George L. Williams and his wife Annie. Williams was a successful banker with the Erie County Savings Bank, and he and Annie chose this corner of Delaware Avenue and North Street — a spot that once had views of Lake Erie — for their new home.
White had a history here: he worked in Buffalo as associate architect to Henry Hobson Richardson when Richardson designed the Buffalo State Hospital in 1870, and he returned in the 1880s to design a shingle-style house for Erzelia Metcalfe at 125 North Street, commissioned in July 1882, right next door to the plot where the Williams house rose. Today this building is a contributing property to the Delaware Avenue Historic District, designated in 1974. Picture Stanford White's New York firm, McKim, Mead and White, bringing Gilded Age ambition to this corner of Delaware Avenue and North Street.