Grace Knox Mansion

Seymour H. Knox opened his first store in Buffalo on Main Street in 1888. Twenty-three years later, he was the owner of a chain of 98-stores in the United States and 13 in Canada which he merged with his first cousin's to create the eponymous F.W. Woolworth & Co. From 1904 until his premature death in 1915, Seymour lived with his wife and three surviving children at 1035 Delaware Avenue. But, almost immediately after he died, his widow commissioned C.P.H. Gilbert - the same who finished Woolworth's Winfield Hall in 1917 - to build her a new  27,965-square foot home in the fashionable Beaux Arts style.

It was completed at a total cost of $600,000 and contained 25-rooms for Grace and her two youngest children - her eldest daughter, Dorothy, had married Frank H. Goodyear Jr. in 1915 and was living in another Beaux-Arts masterpiece at 762 Delaware Avenue. The house is equal in grandeur to any of its finest counterparts in Manhattan or on Long Island and still retains all of its exquisite interior and much of the original 18th Century furniture collected by the Knox family. Perhaps the most eye-catching corner of the house is the rotunda in which six different types of marble were used and featuring internal stained-glass windows with a spectacular peacock design executed by Tiffany in New York.

The Art of the Home

From her new home that was then numbered 806 Delaware Avenue, Mrs Knox played a prominent part in Buffalo society but she is perhaps best remembered for her leading role in cultural and charitable circles. Her endowment in 1916 of $250,000 allowed for the creation of the University of Buffalo and she founded the Junior League of Buffalo while being instrumental in her support of the Albright Gallery and the Buffalo Museum of Science. The New York Times estimated that on his death her husband's art collection had been, "one of the finest in the country" but even after Grace had donated several pieces to the Albright Gallery her walls here were not left lacking. In 1938, her children donated a further $100,000 in her memory to the Albright Gallery that was used both to create a room for contemporary art and to acquire works by the likes of Matisse, Picasso, Miró, Mondrian, Beckmann and Braque. Her son, Seymour H. Knox II, "the dean of American art patrons" became the first Chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts.

Klopp, Club & Computers

Grace's youngest daughter, Marjorie, was married in Paris in 1927 to the noted aviator J. Hazard Campbell. He was consistently referred to as a descendant of the "Hero of Lake Erie," Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, but that simply was not the case and in fact their one and only ancestor in common, Robert Hazard, was born a number of generations back in 1635! Campbell was however a descendant of the notorious slave-trader Mark Anthony DeWolf whose grandson built the storied Linden Place in Bristol, Rhode Island.

The Campbells lived here with Marjorie's mother and their three children. In 1931, Marjorie's sister, the widowed Mrs Goodyear, married her second husband here. He was Edmund Pendleton Rogers, Franklin D. Roosevelt's "most enduring childhood friend" and the elder brother of Herman Livingston Rogers who Wallis Simpson later admitted had been her "only true love". Marjorie remained here after her husband was killed in a plane crash in 1938 and ten years later (1948) she remarried another widower, Benjamin Klopp, whose daughter would marry her son, Hazard Knox Campbell, four years later.

The Klopps remained here until two years before Marjorie's death when she sold it to the Montifiore Club in 1969. Many of its furnishings were also sold at Christies in New York, such as the six 17th Century tapestries that hung in the marble entrance hall. The club owners added a 20,000-square foot athletic center to the house that contained three squash courts, a gym and locker rooms. But, just seven years later (1978) the club had run into financial duress and the mansion was sold that year for $1.3 million to Paul Snyder to serve as the new headquarters of his business, CTG (Computer Task Group).

The Mansion Today

The Drawing Room became office space and the Breakfast Room became the office of one of CTG's lawyers, but otherwise the integrity of the mansion was unchanged. The Music Room still contained furniture, light fittings etc. that Mrs Knox would have recognized and much of the rest of the house remained entirely unchanged. CTG placed it on the market in 2021 for $3.3-million when it was purchased by Ross Cellino as the new headquarters of Cellino Law, "one of the largest personal injury firms in New York". 

Before carrying out an immaculate renovation, they opened the house for a month in August/September 2021 to give the public "a sneak peek" of its incredible interior. The extension added by the Montefiore Club in the 1970s now serves as office space while Ross Cellino, Jr. and his wife, Anna Marie, live part-time in the mansion itself.