English: Built in 1871-1876, this Romanesque Revival-style building was designed by Andrew J. Warner to serve as Buffalo City Hall and the government building for Erie County. The building housed both governments until Buffalo City Hall was built at Niagara Square in 1931, allowing the government of Erie County to occupy the entire building, though it once again became too small for government needs by the 1960s, leading to the construction of the Edward A. Rath County Office Building across Franklin Street in the late 1960s, as well as a modernist addition to the rear along Delaware Avenue in the mid-1960s. When built, the building was the tallest structure in Buffalo, exceeding the 185-foot-tall towers of the Buffalo State Hospital with the 270-foot-tall clock tower, finally being exceeded by the Electric Tower in 1912. It sits on the site of the Franklyn Square Cemetery, which sits on the site of a cemetery that was formerly the resting place of the remains of soldiers who perished during the War of 1812, when Buffalo was burned to the ground in retaliation for the destruction of Niagara-on-the-Lake in what is now Ontario, Canada, with the bodies being exhumed in 1871 when this building started construction, being reburied at Forest Lawn Cemetery next to Delaware Park. The building also is where future US President Grover Cleveland served as mayor in 1882, prior to his term as the Governor of New York, running on a strictly anti-corruption platform for both offices. The building also was where the body of President William McKinley lay in state after his death by assassination at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, and where his murderer was shortly thereafter put on trial and convicted.

The building features a gray Maine granite-clad facade, an H-shaped footprint, replacement windows, arched window bays on the third, fourth, and fifth floors, paired window bays on outer sections of the first, second, and third floors with blind arches above the third floor windows, wall dormers, a hipped roof, corner pilasters with decorative tops, a cornice with dentils running around the base of the roof parapet, a rusticated stone base, a tower with a pyramidal multi-tier hipped roof, statues atop the corner pilasters, and clock faces on dormers on each side above ad machicolations at the top of the belfry, arched louvered vents, double entry doors at the base of the tower with corinthian columns and arched transoms, and skylights atop the roof. Inside, the building’s lobby features bronze-trimmed doors, decorative ceilings and floors, stone fluted pilasters, cornices with dentils, a grand staircase with decorative balustrades, and elevators with decorative bronze doors and trim surrounds.

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and is in the locally-designated Joseph Ellicott Historic District. The well-preserved building continues to house some functions of the Erie County Government, though it is less important than it once was, remaining primarily as a symbolic and ceremonial space for the county government.