judi lipsey: the architecture of preservation

“Stan was a visionary kind of guy.”

Judi Lipsey is seated in a conference room on the Richardson Olmsted Campus in Buffalo, New York, recalling her late husband, Buffalo News publisher, philanthropist, and preservationist Stan Lipsey, who died in 2016 after nearly three decades running the paper. 

The setting for our discussion is a fitting one, as the preservation and redevelpment of the Richardson Complex was a project her husband was deeply involved in at the time of his passing. And it’s here that the Lipsey Architecture Center Buffalo is currently occupying its temporary home, as work continues to expand it within the campus into a cultural hub engaging the public in Buffalo’s rich history of architecture, landscape design, and urban planning through exhibitions, tours, programs, and community outreach efforts.

The LACB was her husband’s primary passion project during the last decade of his life, Judi says. And that passion was a logical outgrowth of Lipsey’s time in Buffalo, where he relocated from his native Omaha, Nebraska, in 1980. 

“Stan was one of the most resourceful people I’ve ever met. He came to Western New York and very quickly saw that there was semi-poor public sector leadership. And private sector leadership really hadn’t congealed. And that was a big contrast from his days in Omaha, where the private sector worked very closely with the public sector and made a very big impact. 

“When he first got here, his whole goal was to start the morning edition of The Buffalo News, and once that got settled, he looked around the community and thought, ‘Ok, what are we going to do?’ Because his whole idea was, if you’re going to be successful, the community that you live in has to be successful, too.”

The architecture of preservation

As Judi explains, Lipsey took everything that he learned in Omaha–where he led a chain of weeklies to the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting in 1973, and ultimately persuaded his friend Warren Buffett to invest in newspapers, a decision that would have a profound impact on Western New York–and applied it in Buffalo.

His initial focus was on connecting the private and public sectors through discussions on civic improvement and urban planning, with an eye on our region’s ever-elusive prospects for economic revival. But soon, Lipsey grew obsessed with the city’s architecture, and his focus shifted to preservation, in no small part due to the friendship he’d struck up with the late Democratic Senator from New York, Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan led efforts to secure grants and loans for the restoration of the former Prudential Building–now known as the Guaranty Building–in the early 1980s.  

“Stan became incredibly passionate about the extraordinary architecture we have here–the second finest in the country only to Chicago, in terms of period architecture,” Judi says. “His friendship with Moynihan, who was considered the architectural conscience of the Senate, definitely spurred that passion on.” 

That passion led to Lipsey’s involvement in the restoration of the Frank Lloyd Wright Darwin Martin House, which won him the 1997 Spirit of Wright Award, in acknowledgement of his leadership role in what was then the largest Frank Lloyd Wright restoration project to date. It would be another ten years before work on the project was completed. 

“Stan had just finished up the whole Darwin Martin House project, and it was the actual day of the ribbon-cutting ceremony in 2006, when we had both New York senators and the governor here, when he handed in his resignation as vice-chairman of the board for the Darwin Martin House, because he never wanted there to be any appearance of conflict with The Buffalo News,” Judi recalls.

“And I said, ‘That’s great, we can have a life, we can go on vacation, there’s so many things we can do now!’ And he said, ‘Not so fast–there’s something else I want to do,’” Judi laughs. “‘I want to build an architecture center. We have the second greatest collection in the country. Cultural tourists spend more money than other tourists. People know of a few things here in town, but there’s such a breadth of things here that we can keep people here longer–they don’t have to start at Niagara Falls, they can come to the city and see all of these incredible assets we have here.’ 

“He felt it was time to really promote Western New York’s architecture to the world. He told me–‘I want to rehabilitate the Richardson Complex and I want to build an architecture center there.’”

It took Judi a little while to fully embrace the idea. In her view, the task of restoring the Richardson property was an extremely daunting one. 

“I asked Stan, ‘How many square feet is that building?’ And he said, ‘Half a million.’ I said, ‘Stan–look how many years it’s taken us to get the Martin House done, even with all the right people, and the right board. My god, it took two decades!’ And he said, ‘I’ll never live long enough to see it finished. So I have to hurry and get the right people in place now, so that it gets done even after I’m gone.’ 

“Can you imagine? Gotta love the guy.”

Furthering a legacy

When Lipsey passed away, the boards of the Richardson Center and the LACB both asked Judi to join. She didn’t hesitate to take them up on the offer. 

“I thought, things were very far along in the works, and I could be helpful in voicing some of Stan’s desires,” she says. 

The restoration project would prove to be an uphill climb, however. Though Lipsey had helped to secure an earmark of $100 million from Governor Pataki, much of that money had been siphoned off into the Darwin Martin House project. And the condition of the Richardson building was, in Judi’s words, “absolutely terrible, with sections that were not inhabitable.” The money was running out, and quickly. 

“The problem was, when the money runs out, you can’t continue to develop. So they recognized that they needed to have a tenant. And that’s how the whole idea for the Richardson Hotel came about. They felt that, if they could at least take the two primary buildings and lease them to a hotelier, the preservation efforts could continue.” 

Enter real estate developer Douglas Jemal. And he arrived in the nick of time, recalls Judi. 

“There wasn’t more development money coming in–things got tight with the government as the 2000s went along, and funding for all the culturals became tighter and tighter. So we really needed to find someone who was going to develop the rest of the campus. We looked for a long time. And fortunately, we lucked out. Doug Jemal was on a whirlwind tour of leasing and buying everything he could in Western New York, and we were able to interest him. He came down and thought, ‘Wow, this could be my legacy,’ were his words. He saw the potential here, immediately.” 

With the Richardson Olmsted Campus Board acting as the stewards of the campus, and Douglas Development as the new tenant for most of the property, “we had two organizations that we could truly rely on,” Judi says, noting that the primary desire was to find a stable, viable, and permanent home for the LACB. With that established, the Board started the process of selecting an architect to do conceptual work, and then presented that concept to the State Historic Preservation Office for approval.

Though much work remains, Judi is wholly optimistic about the project’s future. 

“I’ve kind of stepped into Stan’s shoes, with the Architecture Center,” she says. “I’m just one of the many on the board of the Richardson Center, which is a great board, and continues to really work toward this campus being everything it can be. Besides the fact that Douglas Development is doing all the work on all the buildings, the Richardson is really trying to take the campus and create an environment for opportunities–like concerts, events, and all those kinds of things. It’s just a gorgeous place.” 

The art of giving back

Philanthropy was as important to her husband as business and preservation, Judi insists. It remains a prime focus of her own life in his absence. 

Toward that end, Judi remains deeply involved with Roswell Park Cancer Institute, where she serves on the Alliance Foundation Board, overseeing research and clinical testing initiatives, including a recent breakthrough on a new drug that targets Glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer.

“I’m following Stan’s footsteps there, as well. I remember when Stan, [M&T Bank chairman and CEO] Bob Wilmers, and [entrepreneur] Frank McGuire went to visit Governor Mario Cuomo to seek money for Roswell. This was the first cancer research institute in the country, and it had fallen into disrepair. So they went and told the governor, ‘Hey, we’re not in a big hurry because we took Bob’s plane here, so we’ve got all the time in the world. So we’re gonna sit here until you give us the money for a new Roswell Park Cancer Institute.’” Judi laughs and adds, “And they got 212 million dollars.”

Roswell is close to her heart, she says, “because who in Western New York doesn’t have a family member or someone close to them who has been touched in some way by cancer? No one.” 

A project launched in conjunction with the SPCA is also a personal passion project for Judi. 

“Stan and I gave generously to the SPCA, but then we thought we might be able to help more by establishing something interesting and different.”

Working with the SPCA, the Lipseys came up with the idea of establishing a low-cost animal clinic, “because 40 percent of the people who turn in their animals do so because they just don’t have the money to care for them properly,” Judi says. That clinic, on Harlem Road in West Seneca, is today a highly successful endeavor with which Judi still involves herself. 

Cultural concerns figure significantly in Judi’s life as well, and carrying on a tradition created by her jazz-loving husband is paramount among them.

“The Lipsey Jazz at the Albright Knox series is ongoing,” she says of the annual July-through-August free concert program held on the steps of the museum overlooking Hoyt Lake in Delaware Park. 

“I made a pledge to continue it forever.”

A cultural cornerstone

Back in the Richardson Complex conference room, Judi makes it clear that completing her husband’s work on the LACB remains the primary focus of her own life. 

“Stan invested the majority of his time and effort into trying to make the community better. He just got really involved in all things Western New York. A big part of that was preservation. And that’s my work now, too.” 

The cornerstone of that effort is the LACB, which Judi sees as a means of both celebrating our rich architectural and cultural heritage and pointing the way toward our latent future. 

“The LACB that we have now in the hotel here is just a placeholder and a way to let people know that what is coming is going to be much bigger and much more grand,” she says. “Stan really envisioned it not as a museum, but as a springboard, to get a taste of everything, so that it intrigues you and piques your interest, and then go out there and see everything for yourself. We offer a context–we welcome people in and tell them why they’re there–and then we show them what a wealth of architecture we have in Western New York, and share with them the relationships between the patrons and the architects, and how all of these things came to be. We celebrate what’s still here today, but also what is gone, but not forgotten.”

“The appeal of the LACB is for everyone,” Judi concludes. “Yes, it’s vitally important to reach out and bring cultural tourism here. But there is no cultural organization that can be sustained without the interest of the community it serves.”