BUFFINGTON, Leroy Sunderland (1847-1931) of St. Paul, Minnesota was credited with the design of one of the first railway terminals in Western Canada. Prepared in 1881, he was commissioned by the Canadian National Railway Co. to develop plans for a "mammoth depot" on Main Street in WINNIPEG, MAN. (Evening Star [Montreal], 31 Aug. 1881, 4, descrip.). Consisting of a vast roof covering 5 or 6 railway tracks, it was intended to serve as a gateway and hub to the west for trains from Toronto and Montreal, but it is unclear if any portion of the complex was erected. Buffington also prepared the plans for a unique prairie style residence for Norman Heimbecker, Wellington Crescent, WINNIPEG, MAN. in 1907 (Early Buildings of Manitoba, 1973, 94, illus.; W.P. Thompson, Winnipeg Architecture 100 Years, 1975, 32, illus.). This design combined Moorish and Byzantine features in the exterior detailing which gave the house a distinctly eclectic appearance.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Buffington trained there with Anderson & Hannaford. He opened his own office in St. Paul in 1871 and another office in neighbouring Minneapolis in 1873. His best known works there include mansions for members of the Pillsbury family, the extensive Pillsbury Flour Mills (1880-82), and several buildings on the campus of the University of Minnesota. He also designed the State Capitol Building at Bismark, North Dakota (1882-83) and lived to see it regrettably destroyed by fire in 1930. In the United States his national reputation was based on his claim to the patent rights for a steel frame construction system for skyscrapers, a proposal which received the attention of the Canadian press (C.A.B., i, Oct. 1888, 9, descrip.) and was the subject of controversy and ridicule in the American press when journalists described the scheme as '......the production of a crank'. Despite years of litigation, he never saw his patent put to use. He died in Minneapolis on 16 February 1931 (obit. Minneapolis Tribune, 17 Feb. 1931, 11; Architectural Record [New York], lxix, March 1931, 92; biog. and port. National Cyclopedia of American Biography, xxii, 364; biog. and list of works MacMillan Encyclopedia of Architects, 1982, i, 320-1; biog. in Alan Lathrop, Minnesota Architects: A Biographical Dictionary, 2010, 32-33). An interview with Buffington, with his photographic portrait, was published in the Victoria Daily Times in Victoria. B.C. on 13 April 1929, 31.