The John Kam Company Malt House & Kiln House, 356 Hertel Avenue, Buffalo, New York, August 2021. Built in 1901, this steel-reinforced brick warehouse complex is one of the rare extant examples (and the only extant one in the local area) of the school of malt house design practiced by Wisconsin maltster-turned-architect John F. Dornfeld, which earned it a listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 2021. Here, Dornfeld uses the German-derived Romanesque substyle known as Rundbogenstil which manifests itself subtly in the round arches crowning the windows on the east elevation and the corbelled scalloped frieze lining the flat roof. Note also the ghost sign still visible among the third-floor windows. Not visible here is the kiln house at the northwest corner of the complex, seven stories tall and of simpler design. Originally a baker, Bavarian-born John Kam (1833-1905) was producing malt on a small scale as a side hustle as early as the 1850s and had transitioned into a full-time maltster by 1869, when the city directory registers him as the owner of a malthouse on Genesee Street on the city's Near East Side. By the time of the construction of this then-state-of-the-art complex, the John Kam Company was one of the nation's leading producers of malt, and Kam himself was a founding member of the United States Maltsters' Association. With the onset of Prohibition in 1918, the Kam company transitioned to manufacturing animal feed.