Small House, Big Fuss: Dying Wish Raises a Ruckus

Anna Beck was in her 70s when she stared down city leaders and saved her tiny home from urban renewal.

Now, 20 years later, she and the city are at loggerheads again over the clapboard house with its green picket fence. This time, Anna Beck is on the side of the wrecking ball, and the city opposes it.

It is not the only irony in her story: In the fight of her life, Anna Beck is dead.

Beck’s will--directing that the house be torn down upon her death--is now doing battle for her. No one but family has ever occupied the cottage built by Beck’s grandfather in the 1860s. And it was her dying wish that no one but family ever would.

But the city sees historical significance in the house’s structure and age. If Beck were here, she’d probably agree. But she would say it is her history, not the city’s.

After her death in January 1998, Beck’s will, with the unusual demolition provision, wound up in court, where the Buffalo Urban Renewal Agency argued that the house had historical value.

Erie County Surrogate Judge Joseph Mattina, who toured the home, stumbled on an outside step. “I automatically looked up to the sky and thought, ‘Anna, are you trying to tell me something?’ ” he said at a June hearing.

Then he authorized demolition.

“Ironically,” Mattina wrote in his ruling, “the agency which now claims to champion its preservation on the basis of an undefined public interest, is the very same agency that once went to court seeking its demolition under the banner of urban renewal. That twist of fate is not lost on the court.”

But more challenges followed.

The Buffalo Common Council passed a resolution barring demolition permits so the house could be considered for landmark designation. Again, Beck’s lawyers went to court. Again, the court ruled in favor of the estate.

Then a city council member, on behalf of his intern who wanted to buy the house, appealed that order and further held up the demolition permit. The estate’s motion to dismiss is pending.

The Buffalo Preservation Board, meantime, denied landmark status by a vote of 4-3. Another win for Anna Beck.

But the house remains standing.

Arline Hoyt remembers her friend’s first fight with City Hall, in 1975. At that time, Beck and her sister, Veronica, were the only residents on the block who couldn’t be bought out.

“It was a tough battle, but Anna was a feisty one and she was just determined she was going to win,” Hoyt said.

Even when the debate dragged on for two years, the Beck sisters would not back down.

“She wanted to live her remaining life there,” said Mary Kennedy Martin, an attorney representing the estate. “She and her sister were in their 70s. This was tremendous turmoil for little old ladies.”

The city finally caved. It agreed to move the house onto city property. And the Becks, by agreement, specified that the house would be demolished after the last family member died, though the city had the option to buy the lot for $100.

The tan house is an unassuming stitch in the fabric of Buffalo. Overshadowed by nearby hospitals and stately apartment and office buildings, it is easily overlooked. On a 51-by-102-foot lot, it is assessed at just $14,000.

All the fuss over it is puzzling to some, including Hoyt, who was a regular visitor.

“It’s just on a plain corner,” she said. “Nothing important was ever done in the house. It’s not like the Wilcox Mansion,” the Buffalo estate where Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president.

She chuckled over an art historian’s description, written on behalf of preservationists. “It made it sound like an Italian palazzo,” she said.

“This ‘formal dining room’ is maybe 12 by 12,” she said. “There’s one bedroom off the living room and one off the dining room. Neither had a door. They had curtains hung in the doorways.”

But others see more than a cottage. “It’s a nice piece of vernacular architecture,” said council member David Franczyk. “It’s a nice example of how working people built their homes and lived at the time of the Civil War.”

He and others believe that the City Council should designate it a landmark, regardless of the preservation board’s recommendation.

“You save the big famous buildings, but these little Anna Beck houses are the ones that fall between the cracks,” he said, “and they have a significant role in our history.”

Snared in a legal web, the will has presented another problem. Legal fees, along with taxes and insurance still being billed to the estate, are eating away at money that Beck had intended to go to St. Louis Church. A lifelong member of the parish, Beck considered it one of her “first loves,” friends said.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Robert Mack, church pastor, contends that if the house remains, it would belong to the church, and he would have no choice but to sell it to carry out Beck’s wishes that the church benefit from her estate.

And when Beck made her wishes known, it was wise to follow, said friends who had debated politics, the pope and the president with her--right up until the end.

Now what would Beck say of all the lawyers, the preservationists, city officials and judges, and their big debate over her little house?

“She would be whirling like a dervish,” Hoyt said.

She and other friends stood by recently as a group of preservationists toured the house to make their case for saving it.

“We all said the same thing. They’d better be careful.”