English: A spring snow falls outside the Charles F. Sternberg House in Buffalo, New York, as seen in March 2015. An excellent example of the Second Empire style constructed at the height of the aesthetic's popularity (1870), the Sternberg House is located at 414 Delaware Avenue (corner Edward Street) and is the sole remaining work of local architect George M. Allison, who designed several costly dwellings on Delaware Avenue in the 1860s and 1870s. All the classic features of the style are present in superlative iterations: a façade of red brick contrasting with smooth-textured cut stone trim which comes in the form of quoins at the building's corners, elegant semicircular window hoods, and a prominent cornice at the roofline; a convex-faced mansard roof of slate shingles perforated by pedimented dormers; an elegant Classically-influenced entrance porch centrally situated on the façade, flanked by paired Corinthian columns and a semicircular marble stairway. Original owner Charles F. Sternberg (1840-1929) was a grain merchant who at the time of his residence in the house was in business at the Central Wharf with Phineas S. Marsh. Despite having the house constructed at considerable expense on the occasion of his marriage to the former Mary Blackmar, Sternberg only lived in the house for three years before selling it onward to lumber baron William H. Gratwick, who in turn sold the house in the early 1880s. Subsequently, it served variously as apartments, a hotel, and the home of the renowned Victor Hugo Wine Cellar; since 2001, it has once again been operating as a hotel: The Mansion on Delaware Avenue.