I became interested in the Lafayette Hotel in Buffalo, N.Y.,when my partner, novelist Ishmael Reed, returned from a trip to his hometown. He reported that he happened to walk into the lobby of the hotel while attending a Buffalo book fair, and noticed a plaque, which cited Louise Blanchard Bethune (1856-1913) as the building's architect and for being the first American woman to open her own architecture office (1881) and the first woman to become a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1889). He was astonished that a woman in the 19th Century could find a place in a profession so adamantly dominated by men.

Buffalo's proud past is exhibited by the grand mansions that line Delaware Avenue. One of them, which belonged to the Butler family, owners of the Buffalo News (formerly the Buffalo Evening News), is fit for a king. The city's downtown is speckled with distinguished buildings that bear the names of some of the country's greatest Gilded Age architects, including H.H. Richardson, Adler and Sullivan, D. H. Burnham, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Even Buffalo's collection of grain elevators became international icons of modernism, inspiring architects and painters.

But this building--aka Hotel Lafayette and more recently Hotel @ The Lafayette--lingered in the shadows of a downtown square for decades. Once the stopover choice of presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, it, like the city itself, had fallen upon hard times, as a result of the decline of steel manufacturing, which had been the economic engine of Buffalo's growth and before that the opening of the Saint Lawrence sea way, which ended Buffalo's role as a center of port activity via the Erie Canal.

When I visited Buffalo in 2006 I could see for myself that the seven story hotel had become the fleabag and even crack house that Ishmael had described it as. One of 11 luxury hotels in the United States when first opened in 1904, it was being managed by the family of the late Tran Dinh Truong, a Vietnamese businessman whose modus operandi was to buy run down hotels, change them into housing for welfare and homeless tenants, and cut operating costs by skimping on repairs and security. At a reception at Buffalo's Statler Hotel, I brought the matter to the attention to Mayor Byron Brown, who was not aware of the Lafayette's condition. Little did I know at the time that some of Buffalo's architects were beginning to revive interest in its remarkable architect, Bethune, who is buried in Buffalo's famous Forest Lawn cemetery along with President Millard Fillmore and funk star Rick James. Unlike their resting places, her grave remains unmarked except for a plaque indicating its location, installed in 2006 by the Buffalo/Western New York chapter of the AIA.

In 2007 I met with architect Clinton Brown who was then advocating for the Lafayette's placement on the National Register of Historic Places, as its preservation status could provide a first step toward fundraising for critically needed repairs and renovations. I became attached to the subject of this hotel and its creator. My book Rediscovering America, a multicultural chronology of American achievements in the arts, business, science and technology of the 20th Century had been published in 2003 and I was compiling one about the 19 Century. I decided to interrupt the writing of that book and instead write one centered on Louise Bethune. I approached Robin Philpot, a Canadian publisher, about the idea and he gave me the go ahead to co author a book with Canadian architectural historian Tania Martin. The book, entitled Storming The Old Boy's Citadel, will include Bethune and Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart (1823-1902), who is credited with building some 26-30 schools, churches and orphanages in the Pacific Northwest, to fulfill the mission of her Quebec based order, the Sisters of Providence. Armed with tools, this architect did some of the carpentry herself.