Martin died in 1935, and his wife left the house the following year. The property sat vacant until it was acquired by the City of Buffalo in a tax foreclosure in 1946.

Sebastian Tauriello, an architect, purchased it in 1955. He sold off part of the land, resulting in the 1960 demolition of the carriage house, pergola, conservatory and greenhouse and their replacement by three apartment buildings.

The University at Buffalo purchased the house in 1966, and had stewardship over the declining masterpiece into the mid-1990s. It was used first as a president's residence.

Martin Myerson, who lived in the Martin House from 1966 to 1970 as UB president, recalled it being "neglected," but said living there was like a dream come true.

"Frank Lloyd Wright was probably my favorite American architect, and the Martin House was one of the great treasures of American architecture," Myerson said. "We had a dream that maybe we could live [there], but I thought it would be utterly impossible."

Margie Myerson, Myerson's wife, said architecture fans would often make a pilgrimage to the house. "A class came down from Toronto, and we came out one morning and saw all these young people out there and thought we had a sit-in," Myerson laughed, recalling a time when the university was regularly confronted with student protests against the Vietnam War.

Eventually, grass-roots efforts by preservationists in the 1970s would lead to the formation of the Darwin Martin Restoration Corp. in 1992, which would spearhead the complex's renaissance.
- Mark Sommer