Within These Walls: Buffalo’s Iconic Venues

By Robert J. McLennan
(Image above: Photo illustration from photo by Robert J. McLennan)

Each year on the Friday night before Thanksgiving, for the past eight years, Babeville has had a sold-out crowd gather in the old church at Delaware and Tupper in downtown Buffalo. 

The yearly event is a reenactment of the concert and movie, “The Last Waltz,” celebrating The Band and its final performance in 1976.  It’s a joyous and beloved affair that creates a mood of anticipation mixed with excitement and nostalgia. 

The building is perfect for the occasion, filling in for the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. (Full Disclosure-this writer is a co-producer of The Last Waltz for the Sportsmen’s Americana Music Foundation.)  With the look of the building, the woodwork, the stained-glass windows, the pews in the balcony, the basement that holds the 9^th Ward and the central location right in the heart of downtown, there is nowhere else the concert should be held.  But the address came very close to being just another parking lot.

While Buffalo remains an architecturally interesting city with much to offer, a lot has been lost.  Other churches have been neglected and some then suspiciously destroyed by fire.  Significant public buildings have been unnecessarily demolished, like the original Buffalo Public Library, Erie County Savings Bank at Shelton Square, the original Hotel Statler at Swan and Washington streets, the Lehigh Valley Railroad Staton, the German Insurance Company Building and the Larkin Building.  Other hotels from Buffalo’s gilded age are gone; the Iroquois Hotel, Pierce’s Palace Hotel.  And even places like The Harbor Inn in the Old First Ward that were historical landmarks for working people were sometimes demolished when nobody was looking.

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In 1895 an entire city block surrounding Main and Washington streets was demolished, and then there’s the tragedy of the destruction of Humboldt Parkway to create the Kensington Expressway.  I could go on, but I’m sure you get my point.  At times we have thoughtlessly destroyed our history and heritage as a city, and that’s where it was heading for the Asbury Delaware Methodist Church at 341 Delaware Avenue.

This is where folk-rock Buffalo performer Ani DiFranco and her manager Scot Fisher come into the story.  Fisher read Donn Esmonde’s story in the Buffalo News in November 1995 about the deteriorating church and founded the group, Citizens to Save the Asbury Church.  DiFranco and Fisher decided to buy the building and renovate it and create a live music venue and arts center with office space. 

“If we’re going to buy a big, old building, we should buy this one,” said Fisher in 2003.  He continued, “People say I’m out of my mind, but they said I was out of my mind when I quit law school to manage my friend who was playing coffee houses.”

DiFranco grew up in Buffalo and started performing at Nietzsche’s and other Buffalo bars as a teenager.  Now she is a respected artist known around the world, but even back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s she was a big deal.  She started her own record company, Righteous Babe, and stayed in Buffalo. Her independent status, at times, brings her almost as much attention as her brilliant music.  She’s been nominated for Grammys and shared stages with Dylan, Prince, Springsteen and even Pete Seeger. 

Fisher was also born and raised in Buffalo: “I have a background in construction. I started as a house painter, then carpenter; eventually I became a general contractor,” he said in a recent interview. “So I knew the physical world very well. I could read blueprints.  When I learned that the city ordered an emergency demolition of the building, I put on a jacket and tie and went into Judge D’Amico’s court. I could see by looking at this building that it wasn’t falling down. The walls on the exterior were straight and true.  A stone may have gotten loose and hit the sidewalk but, to paraphrase Chicken Little, the sky was not falling.”

Fisher explained, “I was Ani’s personal manager and I was president of the record company, the record company was owned by me and Ani.  Ani did the music and I did the business, but it was really like, she’s touring on the road and she really wasn’t running the record company.  However, owning a venue and putting on concerts is very different than running a record company or managing an artist.”

All that said, DiFranco and Fisher didn’t need to get involved with this maze of bureaucratic, legal and financial mountains to climb in order to do something for the city of Buffalo.  DiFranco made some money as an artist, and worked very hard to build a highly impressive career with great integrity.  She and Fisher didn’t need to spend a lot of money on a church restoration project. 

But they took a real leap of faith in investing their money in this project.  All the money they spent was split equally between DiFranco and Fisher.  Fisher told me, “Half of the money was mine.  You know, Ani’s the famous person. And, you know, it’s like nobody cares about Scot Fisher. But that was my life savings.”  But, they did it, and without the efforts of DiFranco and Fisher, the corner of Delaware and Tupper would, again, most likely be a parking lot.

Let’s look back to the start of the church and the Asbury name. The Asbury name started with Francis Asbury, who never visited Buffalo.  Born in England in 1745, he came to the American colonies in 1771 and he died in 1816. During his life in America he was devoted to his ministry, traveling on horseback thousands of miles to those living on the frontier.  Asbury spread Methodism in British colonial America and the United States and he is often celebrated as one of the founders of the Methodism in the United States.  Many Methodist churches throughout the country use his name for their churches, and that is the case with the Asbury Church started in 1847 at the corner of Niagara and Franklin streets.

In 1871, a new church went up on the corner of Tupper and Delaware, the Delaware Avenue Methodist Church, and the Asbury congregation almost joined them, but instead they built a new church at Pearl and Chippewa.  The church at Delaware and Tupper was planned in the post-Civil War years and construction started in 1870.  Delaware Avenue was the most exclusive part of the city of Buffalo, then the eighth largest city in the country, with more millionaires per capita than anywhere else.  This was now the new uptown church to serve Buffalo’s wealthy Protestant/Methodist community, right on the edge of the Millionaires Mile in what is recognized even today as a national historic district.

The Gothic Revival style church built with Medina sandstone, designed by John Selkirk, would be a brilliant addition to this exceptional neighborhood.  The first phase of the construction was completed in 1871, which included meeting rooms and the minister’s office, where now the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center exists.  By 1876, the building was complete with the two church spires, one of them 185 feet tall.   The bell was cast in Troy, N.Y., the stained-glass windows were created by a Buffalo firm and the church had the largest church pipe organ between Chicago and New York City.  The entire building followed the Methodist design, which aims for beauty and perfection, but without unnecessary decoration and embellishment.

The church was a vibrant place of worship and assembly right in the heart of downtown Buffalo.  The turn of the last century came, along with the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo just down the street from the church.  The wealthy families continued their elite status in the city along Delaware Avenue. 

However, it became a struggle for the two Methodist churches to both exist in the same downtown locality and in July 1917, the Asbury Church at Pearl and Chippewa merged with the Delaware Avenue Methodist Church, bringing the name Asbury to the corner of Delaware and Tupper, where it survives today as the Asbury Arts Center.

After the merger, the Asbury Delaware Methodist Church continued to hold services for more than 70 years, but ultimately the church was affected, like many city neighborhoods and other churches, by people leaving the city for the suburbs.  Especially after the highways were built after WW II, the flight to the suburbs was accelerated.  The congregation had dropped from about 2,000 members in the 1950s to just 135 members.  Toward the end, they saw just an average of 40 regular attendees in services, all members of about 18 families.  In 1990 the church was closed.

The remaining members of the church transferred to other congregations.  During the 1990s, two churches in Amherst merged and decided to take on the Asbury name, so while the congregation which still worships in Amherst might not have directly come from downtown, they share the same name.

The Methodists still owned the building at Delaware and Tupper after it was closed and their efforts to preserve the building were questionable at best.  A church in Texas purchased the building in 1992 and leased it to a local Protestant church.  But then the stones started falling from the spires, the local church bailed out and the building was left vacant again. 

The Texas church started selling off this beautiful, historic building for parts, starting with the alter and the pews.  But journalism and the free press came to the rescue.  Buffalo News columnist Donn Esmonde was keeping an eye on the place and after he called the police, the raiding of the church’s assets stopped.

This is really an astounding story of perseverance, determination and community goodwill extended to the city of Buffalo by concerned citizens of a private company, Righteous Babe Records.  Not just the sidewalk, but Tupper Street itself was closed off for many months due to stones falling from the church.  The upkeep of the church had been ignored, it was falling apart, and the cost of repairs and renovation was greater than the cost of tearing down the building.  That’s where the momentum was going; get rid of the problem.

But Fisher and DiFranco and Esmonde kept a spotlight on the status of the church through Esmonde’s columns and other media reports and there was a public outcry; public meetings were held, calls were made supporting the renovation project and letters were written, the mayor and the Common Council got involved and finally the city of Buffalo bought the building in 1999 for $175,000.

After all, as Esmonde wrote in 1995, “Delaware Avenue was once one of America’s grand thoroughfares. The church is not just a relic of past glory, but part of the grandeur that separates Buffalo from sterile Sun Belt burgs. Beyond that, it is an aesthetic counterbalance to the strip malls and bunker-like drug stores sprouting like weeds around town.”

This is also a story with a lot of starts and stops, hurry up and wait, politics, court dates, close calls and many complications.  Several times, it looked like the building was going to come down, and then Judge Michael D’Amico saved the day.  There were several different plans floated for other arts groups in the city to get involved with this project but it came down to who had the resources to really make it happen. 

It ended up being a lot more convoluted than Fisher expected.  In a 2003 article by Esmonde, Fisher said, “I thought it’d be easy.  I’d form a Save the Asbury Church committee, we’d call all the rich people in town, they’d write checks, and we’d have the money.” 

It was never that easy.  Fisher realized that City Hall just did not have the wherewithal to put the right plan together, so Righteous Babe Records assembled a team of professionals to get things done; building professionals, financial experts, legal counsel and architectural teams to design the interior and restore the exterior. 

This all took time while the condition of the building was worsening, so Righteous Babe Records ended up spending about $60,000 for emergency repairs on a building it didn’t own yet.  That’s how committed they were to this project.  In a Buffalo News article by Brian Meyer in May 2001, Fisher said, “My message to the city is let’s move full-steam ahead. It’s a lot of money, but it doesn’t scare me.”

Fisher explained, “It’s no slam on the city, we’re a poor city, we’ve been a poor city, and it’s like, I think people expect things from the city.  I just learned very quickly that the city just didn’t have the capacity to do any of this, you know? The fact that they did step up, kudos to Tony Masiello and the Common Council at the time, they stepped up and bought the building and didn’t let it get torn down.”

I asked Fisher about finally purchasing the building from the City of Buffalo: “The reason it was $175,000 is because that’s the amount of money that the city of Buffalo bought the building for from the previous owner. That was the mortgage that KeyBank had on it. So, when the previous owner started to gut the building, the city bought it for $175,000 so we made the city whole and bought it for the amount they paid for it.”

Finally, after the nearly endless entanglements and problems to be solved, Righteous Babe Records started the renovation process in the summer of 2003.  The exterior had to be fixed and the interior needed a lot of work, but they were determined to do it right. 

“My wife, Jessie (Fisher), who now is the CEO of the Martin Darwin Martin house, she was working at a historic preservation architecture firm, and she had called me up.  ‘So, I heard you were interested in this building’ and we ended up dating, but I hired her to be the project manager.  She’s a smart woman; I said, ‘I can’t do this on my own, so you need to be the project manager. You need to go these weekly meetings with the architects and the engineers and the plumbers and the electricians and the painters and, you know, report back to me.’

“And so it was at the opening ceremony, the opening party that we had in January of 2006, my wife was on stage nine months pregnant.  My daughter was born Jan. 25.   My wife loves old buildings and, you know, it’s like that’s what makes Buffalo a special and unique environment.  She ran Preservation Buffalo for seven years. And then three years ago, they hired her at the Martin House. She’s a serious preservationist.

“The year that we took ownership of the church was, I think it was 2005.  We did all that construction, and I still didn’t own the building.”

There were a million little details, inside and out, to be worked out.  The stair tower was designed to reflect the industrial heritage and railroad bridges of Buffalo.  A geothermal wells system was installed under the parking lot to gather the 58-degree temp of the earth to heat and cool the building, 21^st century technology in a 19^th century building.  After losing the pews to a previous owner’s neglect, the upstairs pews were purchased from an Episcopal church nearby.  The basement was lowered by 2 feet to make way for the 9^th Ward, the smaller music venue, as well as the dressing rooms and kitchen.  Also, the building was not designed for amplified sound, so they had to add fabric sound panels and curtains.

I asked Fisher about the stone archway at the back of the stage in the 9^th Ward:

“There’s this pile of stone there, and I was always a fan of Mothers, the restaurant, and the kind of stone wall there,” he said. “I said, ‘well, we want to put a stage here.  So, between the two pillars, why don’t we just make a wall out of the stone? ‘ And then when I found out that the only other building that John Selkirk designed that still exists in Buffalo is the Gasworks behind City Hall, I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got John Selkirk stones in my backyard.’ I’m a stone collector from way back. So, I went to my garden and I pulled out some of those gray, limestone bits, and those are the John Selkirk stones (that were in Fisher’s collection).  There’s only about 10 of the stones, and the rest of it is from the construction during the renovation.”

In that stone wall, you can see a mosaic built into it.  Fisher said, “That’s from a photograph that I took of Ani on the top of the Sidway building that became the logo for Righteous Babe Records.  So I thought we should do something here. I took the image, enlarged it on a photocopier and stenciled an outline. I got some ceramic plates and saucers from Goodwill and broke them into small pieces. I just did that mosaic myself.  And the brick background — it looks like it’s solid brick, but it’s really just half inch thick pieces I sliced with a wet saw and mortared up there.”

RELATED MEDIA: The Good playing in the 9th Ward in a 2012 show.

The cornerstone at the base of the wall was found behind the bar, buried in sand.  The original cornerstone for the first phase of the project in 1871 bears an unusual inscription: “AL July 8, 5871 and AD 1871.” The AD is for Anno Domini (In the Year of Our Lord) to represent the classic dating system signifying the year 1871.  AL represents Anno Lucid (In the Year of Light) to represent year zero, when God created the Universe.  It appears that the Methodists had not yet gotten around to reading or agreeing with Charles Darwin, so AL 5871 indicates how old they thought the earth was. 

So, what’s the bottom line, you may be wondering?  Righteous Babe Record spent $2.8 million to restore and revitalize this historic structure.  The city of Buffalo spent $2.7 million.  And preservation and other tax credits totaled $4.2 million.  The deal had no private bank debt.

The official grand opening of The Church happened in January of 2006.  In September 2007 DiFranco inaugurated the Asbury Hall venue with a pair of sold-out concerts, the basement club The 9^th Ward opened and The Church name changed to Babeville.  Hallwalls was, and remains, a tenant and the building has been alive with activity ever since, with its own cinema space downstairs, as well.

Enter Anna Kapechuk into the Babeville story.  Kapechuk, the vice-president of the Asbury Arts Center, is the face of Babeville and has been since she took over the building operation team in the summer of 2009.  She manages the properties, takes care of this old building, books all the shows in both Asbury Hall and the 9^th Ward and does a lot of everything … accounting, ticketing, and coordinating all the events.

Fisher spoke about Anna Kapchuk’s role with the company:  “I’ve always worked with great people, I mean, look at Anna Kapchuk!  Anna does all the work.  I make the hard decisions about stupid things and oftentimes I’m just, you know, sweeping the sidewalk or mowing the lawn.  It’s tough being a woman in in this world today. And she’s vice president of the company and she runs everything and she does an amazing job.”

Buffalo musician Eric Crittenden, of Critt’s Juke Joint and many other projects, described what his experience has been at Babeville, specifically working with Kapechuk:

“Anna breaks the mold, in my opinion, of talent buyers, booking agents and whatnot in the music industry.   All of those roles are largely thankless roles, and as a result there is typically a hard exterior, a hard shell, sort of, that people in that side of the industry wear.  Anna is the polar opposite of that. Anna is calm. She’s cool. She’s compassionate, all the time, and always willing to listen to your idea, no matter how ridiculous it may sound, and if she has to let you down, she does it with grace, and if she wants to move forward, she does that with grace.  I’ve worked with Anna in so many different capacities from doing virtual shows on the stage during the pandemic to trying to woo potential new newlyweds in the Silver Arrow band. She’s the same person every time, no matter what, big smile on her face. No matter what’s going on or not going on in her personal life or what’s going on there at the center, she’s just the same cool ass angel on earth.”

From Bruce Wojick of Bruce Wojick and The Struggle: “We’ve been playing at Babeville in Buffalo for years, and it’s absolutely one of myself and the band’s favorite venues to play, and Anna and the whole staff always, always give you the best plow to do what you need to do. It is just absolutely one of our favorite venues to play. Matter of fact, I have a show coming up on Sept. 24 with myself and the Struggle. I cannot say enough, not one bad experience have we ever had playing at Babeville, whether it be the 9^th Ward or Asbury Hall, just fantastic. I cannot say enough about how they do what they do at that wonderful venue.”

Kapechuk started working for Righteous Babe Records in 2004. 

“I moved out to Buffalo in 2004 to work for Righteous Babe when we were still over on West Tupper,” she said. “We moved in here in 2006, and I helped out where I could.  It was one of those small offices where everybody lends a hand when something’s needed.“   

She explained how she ended up working for Righteous Babe Records. 

“I was going through a Billboard magazine and there was an advertisement for Righteous Babe looking for … I think it was an executive assistant.  And I was a big Ani fan. 
I loved the idea of the independence of Righteous Babe and everything that Ani did and her politics and all that stuff and the support for the labels and her local community.  So, I did that interview and I didn’t get that job, but Mary Begley, who was the label manager, and Susan Tanner, who was doing marketing, both liked me so much they created a marketing position for me. 
And I have a live entertainment background.  I came from a promotion company, and I was working on touring marketing and logistics.  I would help set up the travel, do the tour books, get all the advances.”

Kapechuk said, “I’m from the Albany area and I went to school in Oneonta, and I was working in Binghamton before I came here.”

She said she was a country girl so I asked her how she felt about moving to Buffalo. 

“It was a little scary. It was the first time in a city, my only travel far away from home, trying to find an apartment.  I’m not a city person; when I first started looking at the music industry, my advisor laughed at me because he’s like, ‘you want to live in New York City?’ 
I said, ‘no.’ ‘Do you want to live in LA?’  ‘No, but I’m gonna figure it out.’ And now I live in a city bubble, it’s beautiful.  The trees and the parks and the architecture and, you know, the little neighborhood I live in.”

It was shortly after Kapechuk and the staff moved to 341 Delaware Avenue that DiFranco put on those two sold-out shows.  She remembered, “Those are the Ani shows that became the live DVD, September 11th and 12th of 2007.”


RELATED MEDIA: Ani DiFranco live at Babeville.

And that’s when the building went through the name change.  “We renamed it because the church was just … there are still religious connotations to what a church is, it’s like you shouldn’t be calling yourself that.  Now we’re in the long process of transitioning to Asbury Arts Center/ Asbury Hall, since Righteous Babe is no longer up here anymore.  Asbury Arts Center makes it more representative of what we are now.”

Fisher also discussed the name change: “We don’t call it Babeville anymore. We’re sort of like easing into Asbury Hall. It’s always been called Asbury Hall, and partly because when people are doing weddings there, it’s like, ‘I don’t want to have a wedding in Babeville,’  If you have a wedding invitation from 2005 it will say, to be married in Asbury Hall.  Babeville, that was part of Righteous Babe Records. That’s a little leftover from Ani, but she hasn’t been in Buffalo, she hasn’t been in the building in a decade and we’re in the new chapter.”

That brings us to the issue of Righteous Babe Records no longer being here in Buffalo.  I asked Kapechuk about DiFranco leaving Buffalo. 

“Righteous Babe was on the second floor. The store was here; everything was here, all the staff, everything.”  

However, in 2017 Righteous Babe Records left Buffalo.  Kapechuk continued, “I mean, I think you’d probably get different answers from different perspectives. 
Really, the music industry changed and it was time to shake things up. So, Righteous Babe moved on and got different management, and part of that split was, ‘Scott, you take the church’; now he’s the owner.”  

“And Ani took the record label and … it was definitely hard. 
They had a long, long relationship and everything, but this happened with all good intentions.  I still talk to Ani.  She’s still interested that we’re successful in doing things; things really are lovely.  She lives down in New Orleans; she built her life down there.  I mean, she had two places for a long time.  I don’t remember when she actually sold her place in Buffalo, but … especially once the two kids came into the picture, that was her life. And who can blame her? 
She’s moved on. 
Shook things up in her life, shook things up with her career.

“We wouldn’t be here without her involvement to begin with.  We’ve still got the same spirit.  We’ve got Scot, who has been here from the beginning and was a driving force.”

Fisher was unquestionably the driving force behind this very ambitious project.  Fisher said, “Ani and I split up 10 years ago and I owned half the record company, and I owned half the church; we had a partnership, the record company owned the building.  Ani always owned her own publishing, her songs are her songs, but the property and things like that are different.  So, when we split the financial stuff, I could have just said, all right, I’ll take the money.  But it was like, ‘You’re in New Orleans now, you take the record company and I’ll take your half of the church.  We did a trade and so this is how I make a living.  I’ll be frank with you, it’s not a great living, but it’s something that I’m happy with.”

I asked Fisher if he’s still in touch with DiFranco: “Not too much,” he said. “You know, she’s far away and it’s not the same as it used to be.”

Eventually the building is supposed to be self-sustaining without tax breaks or other assistance. Has it reached that point?  

“We’re still here, and we’re going to be paying property taxes,” Kapechuk said. “It’s an expensive building but we’re making it. 
Our to-do list is gigantic and you just have to keep pushing things along.  We have to decide what has the most urgency.
So that means putting the other stuff like the wish list that we’d love to get done on the back burner because these other things have to happen. And there’s just kind of the way it is.” 

As mentioned above, Hallwalls is still there and the other current tenants are the Buffalo Chamber players, the Buffalo Philharmonic Chorus and Los Artistas del Barrio Buffalo.  

“They all have office space here on the second floor.  Los Artistas are a collective of Latinx artists of all types; painters, poets, dancers, singers, and they highlight their community,” Kapechuk said. “They have events all around the city and in Niagara Falls.”

In addition, 341 Delaware Inc. also owns a small arts studio across the street on Delaware.  That building has the Starlight Studio and Gallery, which works with handicapped adults, and the Teen Reality Theater, which is where they work with high school kids on theatrical programs.   Asbury Arts Center also partners with Buffalo String Works.

Again, this is emphatically an “Arts Center.”  Kapechuk remembers a talk at one point from a realtor saying “you can make tons of money selling to, or renting out the space to, businesses like insurance companies. “

“That’s not how we do it,” Kapechuk said.  “That’s not what this is here for.   It’s still the idea that we need to focus on arts, that’s what makes this place what it is.”

One of Kapechuk’s favorite performances over the years is “The Last Waltz.” “Every year it is a highly anticipated event and such an extreme joy to see so much Buffalo talent put together a fantastic show that is loved by so many,” she said.

• Other special shows from Asbury Hall that Kapechuk mentioned were Joan Baez: “Not just an amazing sold-out Asbury show but also a fun after party in the 9th Ward with Grace Stumberg, one we’ll never forget!” 
  
• St Paul & The Broken Bones – “Both times they performed here have been memorable, watching singer Paul Janeway work his way around the balcony singing to the crowd without missing a beat!” 
  
• Ani DiFranco’s inaugural concerts – “The energy and love of those shows after so much work put into the building was amazing, Ani and her band were absolutely incredible.” 
  
• Andrew Bird with St. Vincent opening – “Huge fan of Andrew Bird and everything he does, but the addition of the relatively new (at the time) St. Vincent who joined him on a few songs was such a beautiful moment.” 
  
• David Cross – “One of many hilarious comedians that have graced our stage, he’s been here a few times but one year he was running a VIP hangout afterwards in the 9th Ward, handing out shots to the fans and simply spending time being himself.”
  
• And Kapechuk continued with, “And the Dakha Brakha concert to fundraise for Ukrainian refugees was a powerful and moving night.”
  
• A couple of Kapechuk’s favorites from the 9^th Ward were Grace Stumberg, Sara Elizabeth, Megan Brown, Tina Williams – “We have so much amazing talent in Buffalo and love seeing them do their thing on the 9th Ward stage, these four powerhouses came together for a special night and it was a real treat for all.” 
  
• And The War and Treaty – “Two amazing sold-out shows, we hope to bring them back upstairs next time.”

RELATED MEDIA: The War and Treaty at The 9th Ward:

The very first concert was the WNED Guitar Fest featuring Pat Metheny on June 17, 2006.  Al Franken did an Air America radio show from Asbury Hall in April 2006.   CNN did a story on The Church in December 2006. Former President Bill Clinton appeared there In October 2007. 

There are so many other highlights over many years, it’s impossible to list them all but here are some of them, in no particular order with, I admit, a slightly personal bias: Cowboy Junkies, Richard Thompson, Calexico, The High Kings, Keb Mo, Steve Earle, Tommy Emmanuel, Suzanne Vega, Lake Street Dive, Bela Fleck, Nick Lowe, Hot Tuna, John Hiatt, Milk Carton Kids, Brandi Carlile, Graham Nash, Rhiannon Giddens, Roseann Cash, Colter Wall, Indigo Girls, and Ricki Lee Jones.

I asked Fisher to look back from now, 2026, to when he got involved with saving an old church in downtown Buffalo. 

“Well, you know, it’s a mixed blessing,” he said. “I’m certainly proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish over the last, I mean, wow, was it really 30 years ago that I first got involved with it when the city was going to tear the building down?  It took almost 10 years to get the financing along with commitments from the city to start the construction and really transform it.  We didn’t really know what was going to happen there. One of the thoughts was that the basement is a big space, so that’s where we could store all the CDs for the record company. Things change.”

Fisher continued, “It was an evolving process. I’m certainly happy that we were able to save this iconic downtown structure. It was finished in 1876, so it’s 150 years old.  You talk to people who are in their 30s right now and they may not know that Buffalo in the ’90s was the place where people were saying things like ‘don’t forget to turn the lights off when you leave.’ The thought was, ‘what are you doing downtown?’  So, we were kind of trailblazing downtown developers, I guess. We needed space for the record company and, you know, having seen venues all over the country, in fact, frankly, all over the world, I thought, what a great place this would be to put on concerts. 

“Initially I thought we’d get in there and throw some paint on the walls and vacuum the floors and we’d be done. Obviously, it was a bit more work than that. And there are challenges now; we have this building that’s 150 years old and despite what they say, there’s no such thing as a maintenance free anything. Even a stone building.  We’re constantly hitting challenges with the physical infrastructure, things break, systems need to be updated. And COVID really hit everyone hard.

“On the upside of helping to revitalize downtown is that the rest of Buffalo seems to be on somewhat of an upswing. The downside for us is there’s a lot more competition for both concerts and weddings and private parties. So that’s a challenge. I’m not going to say it’s easy. People ask me, would you, given what you know now, do it all over again?  Maybe I would have bought Apple stock. … I could have taken money on the development fee, but I took that fee and put it right back in the building. This was just absolutely not a financially beneficial investment.”

RELATED MEDIA: The Buffalo Chamber Players at Asbury Hall

I told Fisher the city and the people of Buffalo and WNY certainly benefited from his decision to put his money into the old church.  He responded, “As I’m driving towards downtown on Delaware Avenue approaching North Street, you know, you make a one-degree turn until it’s right in your vision, and the steeple of the church looms right in front of me.  And to think that that could have been gone and the space could have been a parking lot.  Instead, we have this kind of community living room that we can all use and share.  No, I don’t regret it.”

In 2008, Fisher said and he still maintains, “This project was based on honest to goodness philanthropy.  Ani could have invested in the stock market but chose to give something back to the Buffalo community.  Our plan was to save the architecture and save the building.  We accomplished our goal.” 

How do you measure the improvement of the quality of life to the people in WNY when our architectural gems are saved for the benefit of the entire community and turned into exciting gathering places for all of us?  The Asbury Arts Center/Babeville is a treasure in our arts and music scene that we can all enjoy year after year.

Next time you’re at a concert at Asbury Hall, or in the intimate confines of the 9^th Ward, think about the history of this building and what has gone on within these walls for the past 155 years.  And give a passing thought to Frank Lloyd Wright’s demolished Larkin Building, and what came very close to happening with the Asbury Delaware Methodist Church.

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Robert J. McLennan is the vice-president of the Buffalo Hive Board of Directors. You can read his other “Within These Walls” stories below…

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