When Ellsworth Milton Statler threw open the doors of his “skyscraper hotel” on January 18, 1908, the Hotel Statler (called the Hotel Buffalo after 1922) would be instantly regarded as one of the country’s finest. As a local architect reportedly stated, “The atmosphere was one of confidence; there was nothing tentative about this hotel.” The interior of the hotel “throbbed with plaster grapevines, floating pond lilies, militant cattails, crystal-bead chandeliers, putti (figures of unclad Cupid-like children), dolphins, and gargoyles,” according to a 1967 Buffalo Courier Express account. The lobby was a “medley of old leather, Flemish oak, leaded glass, old brass fixtures, and electric lights.” The Arbor Room, initially called the Palm Room and seen here in an undated photograph, was described in 1908 by the Buffalo Express as “a dream of mural decoration and electric light.” The hotel where John D. Rockefeller and William Jennings Bryan were guests went into decline after the Depression, and when it was demolished in 1968, it was called the “last stand of romantic elegance in the city’s lower downtown section.”