Preservation Ready Survey - Table of Contents

Preservation Ready Survey of Buildings Downtown, Northland, and Fougeron/Urban Survey Areas
Buffalo, NY
Official City of Buffalo Digitized Complete Preservation Ready Survey

NOTE: FOOTNOTES NOT INCLUDED IN THIS REPRINT. BOLD LETTERING ADDED FOR EASE OF READING.

3.1 HISTORICAL OVERVIEW OF BUFFALO

The general vicinity within and around the City of Buffalo was occupied during prehistoric times (e.g., before the arrival of European explorers). The southwestern portion of the Downtown survey area, at what is now the Canalside area, was the site of prehistoric occupation from 4000 BC to about AD 1500. This occupation at the confluence of Buffalo Creek and Little Buffalo Creek as well as Lake Erie may have been continuous or periodic based on seasonal variations of the relative wetness of the area. The area may have served as a node in the prehistoric/protohistoric Great Lakes trade network.

The first Euro-American settlement at what is now Buffalo did not occur until the late 1750s when Daniel de Joncaire established a temporary trading settlement near Buffalo Creek. Referred to as “Rivière aux Chevaux” (River of the Horses), Joncaire’s short-lived occupation was terminated when the French were driven from the area by the British during the French and Indian War. By 1780, some Haudenosaunee subsequently settled along Buffalo Creek, which would later be incorporated into the Buffalo Creek Reservation.

With the conclusion of the American Revolution, riverine reservations at Buffalo Creek, Allegany, Cattaraugus, and Tonawanda were created for the Haudenosaunee, while the remaining territory became available for purchase. Lying on both sides of Buffalo Creek, the Buffalo reservation consisted of 130 square miles and extended east from Lake Erie. Except for a one-mile swath along the east side of the Niagara River, which New York State reserved for itself (the so-called “Mile Strip”), non-Indian land within the present Erie County was acquired by a consortium of Dutch investors referred to as the Holland Land Company in 1792-1793.

By 1795, only four people lived within what is now the downtown portion of Buffalo and the rest of the area was a wilderness. Beginning in the spring of 1798, Joseph Ellicott and his team of surveyors began the process of dividing the Holland company’s land in western New York into townships. The future City of Buffalo was sited and laid out by Ellicott, who called the village on Buffalo Creek New Amsterdam and named the streets after his Dutch patrons and regional Native nations.

In 1808, the community at New Amsterdam (referred to by its inhabitants as Buffalo) became the seat of the new county of Niagara. The new Niagara County comprised what are now Erie and Niagara counties, and contained three towns - Cambria, Clarence, and Willink. Two years later, the Town of Buffalo was created from the Town of Clarence, with New Amsterdam (now called Buffalo, as well) remaining as the county seat. The Town of Buffalo comprised all the land west of Ellicott’s west transit (i.e., present-day Transit Road), while the village of Buffalo was concentrated along the high ground north of Buffalo Creek. In April 1813, the State Legislature passed an act formally incorporating Buffalo as a village, but as a result of the strife engendered by the War of 1812, the village was not officially chartered until April 1816.

During the war [War of 1812], the British burned nearly every structure in Buffalo and the nearby community of Black Rock at the end of December 1813. Many residents trickled back to the smoldering ruins of the village, as the area remained an active part of the Niagara theater.

Prescient efforts by Samuel Wilkeson in 1819 led to the construction of Buffalo’s harbor, which seduced the Erie Canal commissioners to site the western terminus of the canal at Buffalo. When the canal opened along its entire length on October 26, 1825, the Erie Canal would make Buffalo the transshipment point for goods moving between the Midwest through the lakes to New York.

The economic prosperity resulting from the Erie Canal swelled Buffalo’s population. In 1825, Buffalo contained 2,412 people; by 1835, this number had mushroomed to 15,661. In 1832, Buffalo was incorporated as a city, with Buffalo Creek its approximate southern boundary.

The invention and proliferation of the grain elevator reinforced Buffalo’s strategic location as the nexus of the Great Lakes/inland trade and the ocean trade associated with the Atlantic ports. Beginning in 1842, construction of numerous grain elevators would turn Buffalo into one of the leading grain shipping centers in North America. From the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century,

[l]ake steamers loaded with grain, lumber, livestock, iron, and limestone docked and waited while their cargo was loaded on to canal boats and freight trains bound for seaports of the east. Access to rail and water transportation also facilitated the development of the city’s first factories. Flour mills, breweries, grain elevators, tanneries, and iron foundries all crowded the banks of the Buffalo Creek in South Buffalo.
In 1854, the city’s increasing population was 74,214, with more than 60 percent of those people foreign born. These residents at that time included 31,000 GermansIrish (most of whom were Catholics) and were concentrated in what was then the First Ward, the waterfront areas of the present Downtown survey area. In 1853, the City of Buffalo extended its boundaries, annexing the surrounding Town of Black Rock.

Buffalo’s agriculture-based economy diversified to include commerce, industry, and, as expected, navigation. Many of these industries (e.g., shoe factories, shipyards, tanneries, flour mills, machine shops, blacksmiths, iron works, lumber yards, soap factories) were located near the canal and waterfront, including the "Cobblestone District." Other enterprises sprang up to serve the myriad interests of both industries and individuals. Banks and insurance operations developed to assist and ensure the flow of commerce, while clothing stores, tailors, dry-good and grocery stores, printers, taverns, miscellaneous artisans and craftsmen operated to serve the workers and entrepreneurs on the wharves.

The arrival of the railroads during the mid-nineteenth century fostered the continued economic growth and diversification of Buffalo into a more densely populated, more heavily industrialized area. From its introduction in 1848, railroads would begin to dominate the downtown area. By the end of the nineteenth century, railroad lines and resources circumscribed the waterfront and the Cobblestone District and included the New York Central. The Erie Railroad reached Buffalo in 1863 and used a depot at Michigan Avenue and Exchange Street. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western began service in Buffalo in 1883. Other railroads included the Lehigh Valley, among others.

By reorganizing its operations in the city after 1879, the New York Central developed key components of the infrastructure of a passenger rail service that encircled the city. Beginning operation in July 1883, the "Belt Line" used the tracks of the Junction Railroad on the eastern side of the city, which had been completed to the International Bridge by 1872, and the tracks of the former Buffalo & Niagara Falls Railroad on the western side. A total of 2,100 passengers were served in the first week. The creation of this system allowed for the geographic expansion of the city’s population and led to the development of other areas of the city, including the Northland and Fougeron/Urban Survey areas.

and 18,000
Twentieth Century.

The numerous railroads served Buffalo at the end of the nineteenth century which transported goods and raw materials to and from the lake freighters docking at Buffalo’s harbor. At this time, Buffalo was the second leading railroad terminus in the United States (after Chicago). The freight-carrying capacity of Buffalo’s railroads had far eclipsed that of the Erie Canal, and by the early twentieth century, areas along the canal and waterfront had become warrens of decrepit buildings and towering grain elevators. The new Barge Canal terminus was located on the Niagara River at Tonawanda Creek; the old Erie Canal between downtown and points north was abandoned and ultimately filled in. In 1926, the Commercial Slip, the connection between Lake Erie and the Erie Canal and the linchpin of Buffalo’s nineteenth- century economic success, was filled. A Barge Canal terminal building was located at both the Erie Basin and the Ohio Basin in Buffalo.

During the 1920s, 34 variously sized grain elevators were situated along the Buffalo River and around the harbor. In addition to milling operations, cereal companies were also located in the city, including Hecker H-O Company, the Mapl-Flake Company, and the Shredded Wheat Company. Buffalo’s vibrant industrial economy also drew other manufacturing concerns, such as the Curtiss-Wright Aeroplane Company, the burgeoning automotive industry, various machine shops and foundries, meat-packing and soap-making industries, but many of these operations were located along the Belt Line outside the Downtown survey area. The city had a population of 506,775 in 1920.

In the post-World War II years, the grain/flour-products and chemical industries were ensconced along the western oxbows of the Buffalo River, while the steel industry was located farther to the east (notably the Republic Steel conglomeration) and the south in Lackawanna. Despite appearances, a long economic decline was underway by the 1940s. The St. Lawrence Seaway was completed in 1958-1959, allowing ocean-going vessels to by-pass Buffalo (via the Welland Canal between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario), providing another avenue for economic decline. Important companies relocated to neighboring states or closed outright (such as Bethlehem Steel, Hanna Furnace, Republic/LTV Steel, and Shenango, Inc. in the 1980s) and, while the city’s population fell from 580,132 in 1950 to 532,132 in 1960, Erie County experienced increased suburbanization (the county’s population exceeded one million in 1960).

Automobile transportation and the infrastructure that supports it undermined railroad transportation, just as rail transportation and its infrastructure eclipsed canal transportation. The Skyway (the elevated portion of New York State Route 5) was completed in the mid-1950s (opening in 1955) as part of a general boom in large-scale, public construction projects in the 1950s and 1960s, which included the extension of the New York State Thruway into the Southtowns, and the construction of the Niagara Extension of the Thruway (I-190), the Scajaquada Expressway (New York 198), Humboldt Parkway, and the Kensington ExpresswayLehigh Valley Railroad  would cease services in Buffalo. Its huge Main Street station closed 1952 and was razed in the late 1950s for construction of a new state office building. During the late 1960s and 1970s, the large industrial conglomerations situated south of the Buffalo River closed, leaving behind extensive brownfields surrounding the Tifft Nature Preserve.

Since 1970, development in the Downtown survey area of the city included the construction of The Buffalo News building at Washington and Scott streets (1973); the Naval and Serviceman’s Park and Museum (1979 and recently relocated); the light rapid rail transit system along Main Street (completed in 1985; which eliminated vehicular traffic from Main Street in the study area); the downtown baseball stadium (1980s, currently named Coca-Cola Field); the First Niagara Center at the foot of Main Street (1990s); and the HSBC Atrium (1990). More recently, development projects in the Downtown survey area have included the Canalside project, the razing of the Memorial Auditorium, the renovation of the Donovan Building, and the construction of HarborCenter. In 2010, Buffalo’s population had fallen to 261,310, its lowest level since 1890 when it was 255,664.
(New York 33). By the early 1960s, the 

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Page by Chuck LaChiusa in 2017
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