Trico Plant No. 1

Trico Plant No. 1
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Trico Plant No. 1, December 2009
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Location	817 Washington St., Buffalo, New York
Coordinates	42°53′42″N 78°52′10″W / 42.89500°N 78.86944°W / 42.89500; -78.86944
Area	580,000 square feet
Architect	Plummer and Mann; Burton and Ellicott
Architectural style	Daylight Factory
NRHP reference No.	01000053[1]
Added to NRHP	February 2, 2001

Trico Plant No. 1 is a historic windshield wiper factory building located in Buffalo, New York. It is an example of a style of architecture sometimes referred to as the daylight factory, a style for which Buffalo is well known. The building was mostly constructed in the 1920s and 1930s of reinforced concrete and features curtain walls of metal sash windows and brick spandrels, although a portion of the plant incorporates an historic brewery building from the 1890s.^[2] It was the original home of Trico Products Corporation, the first manufacturer of windshield wipers, and was an important factory during a period when Trico was the largest employer in the city of Buffalo.^[3] The building is also known for once being the office of John R. Oishei (1886–1968), the company's founder and an industrialist who went on to become one of the most important philanthropists in the Buffalo Niagara Region.

The Trico business continued to operate at the building until 1998, when, after having transferred most of its manufacturing facilities to Texas and Mexico, the company moved out of the building. In 2003, plans were developed and conditionally approved by the New York State Historic Preservation Office to reuse the building as a mixed residential and commercial structure. That developer subsequently died, and in 2007 the property was purchased by the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC).^[4] After sitting dormant for another four years, it was reported that BNMC planned demolition of about 95% of the building beginning on April 15, 2012 (saving only the brewery building).^[5] Meanwhile, community groups have called attention to BNMC's refusal to conduct an adaptive reuse study or evaluation process prior to demolition to assess the feasibility of building reuse.^[6]

Trico Plant No. 1 was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.^[1]

As of October 2019, large portions of the southernmost (1890-1937) sections of the building are being demolished; the remaining portions are being renovated into a mixed-use complex including a hotel and loft apartments. The building will essentially be separated into two halves.^[7]