The Architectural Photography of Patricia Layman Bazelon
Perhaps best known for her photographs of Buffalo’s abandoned industrial architecture, Patricia Layman Bazelon was born and educated in England in 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1961. She worked in Manhattan as a film and television producer for advertising firms until 1979, when she moved to Buffalo and began working as a freelance photographer, taking advantage of everything that Buffalo had to offer the field of architectural photography.
British architectural historian Reyner Banham commissioned her to photograph Buffalo’s abandoned grain elevators and industrial buildings for his book, A Concrete Atlantis. She fell in love with the Queen City’s industrial landscape, and was given permission to photograph the Bethlehem Steel Plant during its reclamation in 1988. She became the chief photographer for the Brooklyn Museum in 1988, and continued to frequently visit and photograph Buffalo until her untimely death in the summer of 1995.
Patricia Layman Bazelon’s architectural photography can be found in many collections, including the Burchfield Penney Art Center in Buffalo, NY; the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography in Rochester, NY; the West Collection in St. Paul, MN; the Castellani Art Museum in Niagara Falls, NY; and the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, NY.
Grain Elevators and Steel: Architectural Photography of Buffalo
CEPA Gallery is proud to offer Patricia Layman Bazelon’s architectural photography from Grain Elevators and Steel as individual prints AVAILABLE FOR SALE.
-
911240#1: Section of No. 2 Stripper and 44” Mill Pit, looking south
-
911239#11: Blowing Engine House No. 3 with Steamlines, East Façade
-
911238#6: Exhaust Duct on East Wall of Pump Station No. 1
-
911235#2: Limestone, Coal Bin and Steam
-
911231#9: Structural Repair Shop, East Façade
-
911224#4: Boiler House, North Façade with Beams from Father Baker Bridge
-
911216#2: Plate Shop Interior
-
911214#12: Coke Oven Exhaust Stack and Coal
-
894599: Storage Shed by Power Station No. 2, West Façade
-
894597: Power House Wall, West Façade
-
894593: Plate Shop Interior, with Crane
-
894591: Plate Shot Interior, with 19th-Century Wooden Roof Trusses
-
894578: Basic Oxygen Furnace with Roof Exhausts, North Façade
-
894577A: Basic Oxygen Furnace Lime Silo, West Façade
-
894576: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, East Wall from Charging Platform
-
894575: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, Charging Isle with Charging Platform
-
894565: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, Vessel on Charging Platform
-
891239#18: Mill Building Under Demolition
-
891226#5: Bales of Scrap Steel
-
891225#6: Slabbing Mill with Bales of Scrap Steel
-
891211#3: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, 4th Floor, North End
-
891210#7: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, Charging Platform
-
891207#6: Lime Silo Outbuildings
-
891206#4: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior: 4th Floor, North End
-
891204#17: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, 2nd Floor Bridge to South End
-
891204#9: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior, Above Vessel on 4th Floor
-
8845184B: North End of Plant with Union Ship Canal
-
8845175A: Coke Ovens with Father Baker Bridge, Looking South
-
8845146: Road Salt with Coal Bins and Conveyor
-
8845142: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior: 350-Ton Morgan Hooks and Crane
-
8845141B: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior: 350-Ton Morgan Hooks and Crane
-
8845140: No. 3 Open Hearth with Blast Furnace Gas Holder
-
8845136: Ore Bridge No. 7 with Coke Ovens
-
8845133: Coke Oven Coal Bins with Conveyor and Exhaust Stack
-
8845130: Coke Ovens with Abandoned Conveyors
-
8845114B: Ore Bridges Nos. 6 & 8 with Demolition Worker Burning Steel
-
8845104A: Limestone and Salt with Blowing Engine House No. 2
-
8845102A: Pulpit in 44” Mill Building
-
884591A: North End of Plant
-
884586: 54” Mill in Mid-Demolition
-
884583A: 40” Mill Soaking Pit
-
884574A: Sinter Plant and Crusher Building with City of Buffalo
-
884556C: Lime Silo and Slabbing Mill Soaking Pit, with Lake Erie
-
884547: Forge Shop, East Wall with Fallen Ventilating Fan
-
884545A: 40” Mill Motor Room, with 40” Mill Soaking Pit
-
884537: Basic Oxygen Furnace Exhaust Stack, West Façade
-
884520: Foundry Wall, West Façade
-
881265#7: Sinter Plant, South End
-
881264#18: Basic Oxygen Furnace, East Façade
-
881263#16: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Engine
-
881263#1: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Engines, Looking North
-
881262#11: Collapsed Ore Bridge No. 7 with Propane Tank
-
881261#7: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Turbo Blowers
-
881261#12: Corrugated Steel Scraps
-
881259#16: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Engine with Valve and Stem
-
881259#9: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Engine
-
881259#4: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Connecting Joint Inside Engine
-
881257#17: Blast Furnace Roadway with 32” Mill, Looking North
-
881250#17: 350-Ton Morgan Hook in Basic Oxygen Furnace
-
881246#7: Coke Ovens Coal Handling Plant with Exhaust Stack, Looking East
-
881243#13: Steamlines on West Wall of Pump Station No. 1
-
881243#5: West of Blowing Engine House No. 3, Looking South
-
881232#18: Aerial View of Plant, Looking South
-
881221#15: Lime Silo and Smokes Creek
-
881220#17: Ore Bridge No. 7 with Tar Storage Tanks and Lake Erie
-
881219#9: Foundry Window, East Façade
-
881215#2: Basic Oxygen Furnace Interior: 6th Floor Access Platform
-
881211#14: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior, Turbo Blowers
-
8745139: 44” Mill Building, East Façade
-
8745134: Ladle House with Salt and Coal Bin, West Façade
-
8745130: 36” Rougher Motor Room Wall, West Façade
-
8745127: Linde Oxygen Plant on Smokes Creek
-
8745126: Storage Building, South of Smokes Creek
-
8745125: Basic Oxygen Furnace with Exhaust Stack, South Façade
-
8745122: Foundry Interior
-
8745118: Coke Batteries with Coal Bins, Exhaust Stack and Quench Tower
-
8745117: 1902 Administration Building for Lackawanna Iron & Steel Co.
-
8745106: Coke Ovens with Steamline Expansion Loop
-
8845127A
-
8245147A
-
874595
-
874584
-
874568
-
874556
-
874538B
-
874536
-
874534A
-
874526
-
874525
-
874524
-
874523
-
874520
-
874518
-
854513: Standard
-
854509: Cargill Electric
-
83127-14
-
82159-63: General Mills
-
82158-11: Concrete Central
-
82157-62
-
82152-65: Peavey
-
881211 #6: Blowing Engine House No. 2 Interior: 24-Foot Fly Wheel
-
874596: Sinter Plant with Stainless Steel Pollution Control Ducts
-
894592: Plate Shop Interior, East Wall with Safety Barrier
-
874591: Basic Oxygen Furnace on Smokes Creek, East Façade
-
82113-35
-
82112-34: Kellogg
-
8516-20: Kellogg
-
8403-21: Cargill
HOW TO ORDER
Individual prints from the Patricia Layman Bazelon collection are AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE as follows:
- All photos are pigment-based inkjet prints
- Sizes are approximate and vary per print. Some images are square.
- Matting and framing not included
Special 2019 holiday prices:
30×40 $550
20×24 $400
16×20 $300
11×14 $200
About Grain Elevators
“…Also a special tribute to Buffalo, a warm, friendly city which has welcomed and nurtured me; where I’ve had the chance to learn my craft and enjoy my work amidst an abundance of splendid architecture by great masters like Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, H.H. Richardson among many, and by the unsung builders of these powerful industrial monuments.”
A cornerstone of Bazelon’s architectural photography, Buffalo’s abandoned grain elevators proved to be stoic and beautiful subjects.
In 1842, Buffalo entrepreneur Joseph Dart devised a system of bucket “elevators” to scoop grain from freighters into bins. Nineteen years later, when the British novelist Anthony Trollope visited Buffalo, dubbing it “the great gate of Ceres,” more than 50 million bushels of grain annually passed through what would become the world’s largest grain port. By the 1920s, when Le Corbusier heralded Buffalo’s 38 grain elevators as “the magnificent fruits of the new age,” the structures had influenced the Bauhaus school of architecture.
—Tricia Vita, “Against the Grain,” National Trust for Historic Preservation »
About Steel
“…in 1987, I began to photograph the defunct mills, aware of their imminent demolition under a program of ‘reclamation.’ Some of the plant had already been torn down; most still stood—unchanged since the closing. All of it slated to go . . . The thousands of workers—men and women of uncommon courage and skill—were long gone, but they had left their marks indelibly. The abandoned buildings evoke these workers in singular and unexpected ways, and resonate still with their energy.’
The Lackawanna plant was constructed around the turn of the century along Buffalo’s Lake Erie shore. These structures inspired, in part, the utopian vision of the Modernist city championed by such architects as Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. Bazelon’s photographs, taken after the demise of both the plant and the Modernist ideals it embodied, are a testament to the heroic proportions of America’s industrial age and the beauty of purely functional form.
—The Brooklyn Museum Exhibition Archives »
Back to Art Collection Patricia Layman Bazelon Visions of Greater Buffalo