English: The Dexter P. Rumsey, Jr. House, 71 Middlesex Road, Buffalo, New York, January 2022. An early work of locally-based architect Frederick C. Backus that predates by several decades his incursions into Modernism with future partners David Crane and Donald Love, this two-story residence in North Buffalo's Delaware Acres subdivision defies easy stylistic categorization: the Buffalo Division of Planning described is at a "two-story Bungalow style" design in the inventory form they filed in 1984 with the New York State Division for Historic Preservation, yet aside from the bottom-heavy massing, it doesn't seem to have much in common with the standard iteration of the aesthetic. At any rate, this low-slung house sprawls widely, with a hip roof crowning an odd layout wherein a pair of steeply pitched front-facing gables flank a large central dormer, with a hip-roofed entrance portico below. The exterior is faced variously in textured stucco on the ground floor and clapboard above. The exact date of the house's construction can't be ascertained with more certainty than an estimate of the mid-1920s: the Delaware Acres subdivision was opened to development in 1923, but although its namesake owner didn't move into the place until 1929, the house appears already built in photos taken for the 1927 Erie County Aerial Survey. The scion of a family whose roots in Buffalo are as old as the city itself, Dexter Phelps Rumsey, Jr. (1893-1966) distinguished himself as president of the Erie County Savings Bank, board member of numerous local businesses, and in the field of real estate, as president of the development company that marketed Delaware Acres to homebuyers. Rumsey and his family lived in the house until 1938.