[You have to walk into the parking lot to get a view of these buildings]
This building was the factor of George Lewis Buff. Buff was a German-American who learned how to make surveying instruments in Germany. He formed an earlier firm in downtown Boston called Buff & Berger. But he and Berger fell out in 1898. So Mr. Buff formed Buff & Buff with his sons in Jamaica Plain, his own neighborhood. His house was at 23 Cheshire Street, you can see it if the leaves are not on the trees in the back.
Buff & Buff were among the most prominent American surveying company in the country for most of the twentieth century. They remained in business until lasers came into revolutionizesurveying in the 1980s. The company stayed in business until 1982 at this location. Their surveying instruments are now collectors’ pieces that go for a lot of money. Buff & Buff pieces have very fine optics which provide highly-adjusted compass readings. The business employed highly skilled optics makers and metal workers. Since these surveying instruments used compass readings they could not be magnetic at all, so they worked only with non-ferrous metals. The instruments used optics to read the distances with a crosshatch piece (the cross hairs within the glass). To create the crosshairs, they used spider webs. They would pay schoolboys to collect spiders for them. They had their collection of spiders in the basement, where they would weave webs. Then they would wind the silk and use that in the crosshairs. Good spiders would provide three or four reels each of material. The building is now condominiums.