Portal:20th Century Studios/Selected picture/17
As seen in June 2020: the Streamline Moderne-style building at 290 Franklin Street in downtown Buffalo, New York was built in 1937 by the Twentieth Century Fox company to house their local film exchange, i.e. a sort of receiving and distribution center where films sourced from the main studio would be screened for local theater owners and offered for rent, and where advertising posters and other promotional material was made available to movie houses. The construction was considered state-of-the-art at the time; architecturally speaking, it's today considered the best preserved of the eight extant such facilities in Buffalo's "Film Row" along the 200 block of Franklin Street. Distinguishing characteristics include horizontal stone band courses narrowly spaced along the buff-brick façade above the ground floor, and a recessed entrance with curved corners flanked at ground level by Art Deco-redolent, stylized reliefs of tragedy and comedy masks. The building continued functioning as a film exchange until at least 1959; it was used for offices thereafter and is now vacant.