Just two years after buying the historic Williams-Butler Mansion from the University at Buffalo, developer Douglas Jemal is putting it up for sale after finding more interest among buyers than among renters.

Jemal listed the 28,531-square-foot building at 672 Delaware Ave. for sale through Pyramid Brokerage Co. – the same commercial real estate agency that helped sell it to him in December 2022 for $3.75 million. The online listing does not list an asking price.

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UB had used the three-story building as the home of its Jacobs Executive Development Center since the building was donated to the school by former Delaware North CEO Jeremy Jacobs. That connection – the Buffalo-based hospitality company was named for the intersection where it started – is part of what attracted Jemal, the developer had said at the time.

The Williams-Butler Mansion at 672 Delaware Ave. was designed by architect Stanford White and built between 1896 and 1899.

The developer had purchased the 125-year-old former house with the intention of either turning it into a hotel or continuing to use it as office space, but hasn't been able to rent it back out in the two years he's owned it. "Most of the inquiries that we've had have been for sale," he said. "So we're willing to sell it."

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It's also still available for lease, he said, but "we don't want to sit with an empty building." It's now being marketed as "ideal" for a professional office, such as a law firm.

Meanwhile, he has plenty on his plate. The developer has put many of his projects on hold until financing becomes easier to obtain and interest rates drop. However, he is working on the redevelopment of his properties at Elmwood Avenue and Bidwell Parkway, and recently completed his purchase of the city's Mohawk Ramp, which will kick-start his significantly bigger redevelopment of that facility and the adjacent Simon Electric properties.

In contrast, the Butler Mansion is much smaller. The property consists of a 20,644-square-foot mansion and 7,887-square-foot carriage house on 3.28 acres, in the Delaware Preservation District. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Stanford White-designed Butler Mansion, at Delaware and North.

Designed by architect Stanford White, the 40-room mansion was built between 1896 and 1899 for Erie County Savings Bank executive George L. Williams and his wife, on a site that, at that time, had views of Lake Erie. It's considered a "contributing property" to the Delaware Avenue Historic District, and is believed to be one of the last buildings White designed before he was shot and killed during a musical performance at Madison Square Garden in 1906.

Six years after the house was completed, Williams moved away and sold the mansion to Buffalo Evening News publisher Edward Hubert Butler Sr. The home passed to his son after Butler died in 1914, and then to Kate Robinson Butler, who inherited both the home and the newspaper after her husband died in 1956.

Kate Butler continued to own the newspaper and the house until she died in 1974. The home then was sold to the William C. Baird Foundation. The newspaper was sold to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

The Williams-Butler Mansion at 672 Delaware Ave. was built in the late 1890s for a banker and a leather manufacturer, then later passed through other hands including owners of The Buffalo Evening News; Delaware North Cos., and Varity Corp. Most recently, it's been home to the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs Executive Development Center, but was sold to developer Douglas Jemal in December 2022.

The Baird Foundation gave the house to Roswell Park Cancer Institute – now Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center – but Roswell sold it to Delaware North in 1979, along with the adjacent Metcalfe House, which Delaware North demolished to make way for a parking lot.

The company retained the Butler Mansion, spending $6 million to renovate it, before selling it in 1990 to a Canadian company, Varity Corp., for its headquarters.

Varity was later acquired by a company out of Cleveland, which sold the mansion back to Delaware North in 1999.

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