Graycliff

The Graycliff estate was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926, and built between 1926 and 1931. It is approximately 17 miles southwest of downtown Buffalo, New York, at 6472 Old Lake Shore Road in the hamlet of Highland-on-the-Lake, with a mailing address of Derby. Situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie with sweeping views of downtown Buffalo and the Ontario shore, It is one of the most ambitious and extensive summer estates Wright designed. It is now fully restored and operates as a historic house museum, open for guided tours year round (with reduced activity during the winter). There is also a summer Market at Graycliff, free and open to the public on select Thursday evenings. Graycliff Conservancy is run by Executive Director Anna Kaplan, who was hired in 2019.

The Graycliff estate was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926, and built between 1926 and 1931. It is approximately 17 miles southwest of downtown Buffalo, New York, at 6472 Old Lake Shore Road in the hamlet of Highland-on-the-Lake, with a mailing address of Derby. Situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Erie with sweeping views of downtown Buffalo and the Ontario shore, It is one of the most ambitious and extensive summer estates Wright designed. It is now fully restored and operates as a historic house museum, open for guided tours year round (with reduced activity during the winter). There is also a summer Market at Graycliff, free and open to the public on select Thursday evenings. Graycliff Conservancy is run by Executive Director Anna Kaplan, who was hired in 2019. ===Restoration=== Although the Martin family lost much of its fortune due to the Great Depression and was forced to abandon the city house in 1937, they kept Graycliff, and returned annually until 1943. The property was purchased from the family by the Piarists, a Roman Catholic teaching order, in 1951. The Piarist Fathers, from Hungary, established a boarding school on the grounds, as well as Calasanctius, a private high school for gifted children in Buffalo, named after the order's founder. Although they added two structures to Wright's original design, all Wright-designed buildings were left intact. Eventually enrollment dwindled and the schools closed; the number of priests in residence also declined dramatically. Finally in late 1997, the Piarists decided they could no longer afford to maintain the property, and put it up for sale. Soon after, a group of concerned individuals purchased the property, which was threatened with destruction due to its prime lakeside location and attractiveness to private developers. The group formed the non-profit Graycliff Conservancy in order to buy the property, restore it to its original condition, and open it to the public. This effort, aided by volunteers from throughout the community, has undertaken extensive restoration, both to remove the non-Wright additions and to restore the nearly ninety-year-old buildings, and has created a schedule of public tours. The Graycliff Conservancy is the recipient of a Save America's Treasures grant from the US Department of the Interior, and has received many awards for its work. Graycliff is a New York State Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In November 2024, the Graycliff Conservancy began construction on a new visitor center. As part of the new construction plan, the estate temporarily closed and is expected to resume tours in March 2025. The new visitor center is due to be completed in 2026, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Frank Lloyd Wright's design for the Graycliff estate. ==See also== List of Frank Lloyd Wright works National Register of Historic Places in Erie County, New York Joseph Slawinski Other buildings by Frank Lloyd Wright in the Buffalo area: Larkin Administration Building (demolished) Darwin D. Martin House William R. Heath House Walter V. Davidson House Blue Sky Mausoleum ==References== ==Further reading== (S.225) ==External links==

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