Charles F. Sternberg House

The Mansion on Delaware Avenue, also known as the Charles F. Sternberg House is a French-inspired Second Empire Style Mansion built in the late 19th century. It is located at 414 Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York. Industrialist Charles F. Sternberg, who owned a grain elevator on Ohio Street, commissioned the Mansion as a private residence in 1869-1870 at an estimated cost of $200,000. Unfortunately Sternberg died before construction of the Mansion was completed. In the 1860s and mid 1870s, architect George M. Allison, about whom little is known, designed the Mansion in the Second Empire Style along with several other costly dwellings on Delaware Avenue. Only the Sternberg house remains.

The 20,000 sq.ft. Mansion has 200 windows 14 of which are large bay windows. The windows and 18-foot high ceilings were an indication of great wealth due to the enormous expense of heating with coal. In the late 1870s, 414 Delaware Avenue became the residence of lumber baron William H. Gratwick who did not stay there long. In the 1880s, Samuel Curtis Trubee purchased the house, built an annex and turned the estate into a 100-room hotel. During Buffalo’s turn-of-the-century heyday it was the most expensive hotel in town at $3 a night. After World War II, restaurateur Hugo DiGiulio bought the establishment, turning it into the celebrated Victor Hugo Wine Cellar, a legendary Buffalo restaurant and nightspot from 1947-1977. The restaurant closed in the 1970s and was left vacant and decaying from the 1980s-1990s. After standing vacant for 25 years, the property underwent a $2.7 million restoration and was reopened in April 2001 as The Mansion on Delaware Avenue, an historic 28-room and suite luxury hotel. In 2004, The Mansion received the prestigious AAA Four Diamond award, making it the first and only Four Diamond hotel in the Buffalo/Niagara region. In 2011, The Mansion was inducted into Historic Hotels of America, an affiliate of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.