This small his­toric dis­trict is cen­tered on the three blocks of Amherst Street between Nia­gara and Tonawan­da Streets, rep­re­sents what was orig­i­nal­ly the vil­lage cen­ter of Low­er Black Rock, the wide grassy esplanade flank­ing each side of Amherst Street’s west­ern­most block, now filled with his­toric mon­u­ments and inter­pre­tive pan­els, was once the site of a large pub­lic mar­ket gift­ed to the vil­lage by its founder, Peter Porter. In con­trast to what was once called Upper Black Rock, which became heav­i­ly indus­tri­al­ized after annex­a­tion and grew into an inte­gral part of the city, Low­er Black Rock retained its inde­pen­dent spir­it and, even in the present day, still has the look and feel of a small vil­lage. The archi­tec­ture of the build­ings here A which include some of the old­est extant hous­es in Buf­fa­lo com­pris­es fine exam­ples of such styles as the Ital­ianate, Queen Anne, Greek Revival, and Fed­er­al. The red-brick Goth­ic ”’St. John’s Unit­ed Evan­gel­i­cal Church”’ (81 Amherst St., 1890), the Fed­er­al-style ”’Ja­cob Schmidt House and Tav­ern”’ and ”’Stephen W. How­ell House and Store”’ (71 Amherst St. and 189 Dear­born St. respec­tive­ly, both c. 1830), and the gar­gan­tu­an ”’St. Fran­cis Xavier Roman Catholic Church”’ (161 East St., 1912) are some of the his­toric sites to be found in the Mar­ket Square His­toric Dis­trict.