3.2.1 Downtown Survey Area
Joseph Ellicott established the present-day City of Buffalo,
renegotiating the northern boundary of the Buffalo Creek reservation to
ensure that New Amsterdam (his name for the locality) would be situated
at the foot of Lake Erie along the Buffalo River. During Ellicott’s
survey, what is now Main Street was laid out and widened to facilitate
the arrival of supply wagons. Completed in 1803, this road was known to
the early settlers as the Buffalo-Batavia Road and little more than a
narrow, stump-covered wagon route that connected Batavia to New
Amsterdam.
In 1808, New Amsterdam became the seat of the new county of Niagara
(consisting of what are now Erie and Niagara counties). Prior to the
War of 1812, Buffalo was a growing community that supported several
blacksmiths and carpenters, a mason, a wagon-maker, and a
cabinet-maker, as well as other tradesmen, retail stores, and taverns.
At that time,
[t]he focus of settlement was the
area bounded by Chippewa Street on the north and Exchange Street
[called Busti-Cazenovia Terrace and Crow Street at that time] on the
south and by Washington and Franklin streets [originally Onondaga and
Tuscarora streets] on the east and west, but streets were also laid out
around Niagara Square, and there were scattered houses on the roads
leading to neighboring towns.
Below the high bluff of the Terrace lay "swamp and sand waste ... [an area] of little account."
War of 1812.
On the night of December 30, 1813, British forces attacked the
approximately 2,000 militia defending Buffalo and Black Rock, burning
both villages to the ground and destroying ships and supplies. After
the British raids ended on January 1, 1814, only three structures
reputedly remained in the village of Buffalo: David Reese’s blacksmith
shop on Seneca Street, Mrs. Gamaliel St. John’s house on
Washington Street, and a small, stone jail on Washington Street near
Eagle Street. New York Governor Daniel Tompkins remarked that "The
whole frontier from Lake Ontario to Lake Erie is depopulated & the
buildings & improvements, with a few exceptions, destroyed."
As expected, residents trickled back as the immediate hostilities
diminished. However, the area remained an active part of the Niagara
theater with a detachment of soldiers stationed in Buffalo, which
served as a staging area for later actions during the remainder of the
war. During the winter of 1814-1815, the American army remained in
cantonment at so-called "Sandy Town," the area below the bluff at what
is now the Peace Bridge Plaza and Front Park, and
between the high sand dunes that once bordered the lake and the present
right-of-way of Interstate-190. This area is near what is now the foot
of Porter Street and LaSalle Park.
Antebellum Development.
By 1816, the newly re-incorporated Village of Buffalo had a population
of approximately 400, nine of whom were slaves. As pioneers filled the
Niagara Frontier after the end of the War of 1812, new municipal
entities were created including the formation of Erie County in 1821. The region received a tremendous economic boost when it was determined that the western terminus of the Erie Canal
would be located somewhere along Lake Erie. Construction of the Erie
Canal, which would link commercially the Hudson River to Lake Erie,
began in Rome, New York, in 1817. The villages of Buffalo and Black Rock,
located several miles northwest of Buffalo along the Niagara River,
engaged in a vigorous five-year battle to be the site of the canal
terminus, with each village completing extensive harbor improvements to
entice the commissioners. Efforts led by Samuel Wilkeson
resulted in the creation and dredging of a harbor at the mouth of
Buffalo Creek suitable for canal traffic. The location of the western
terminus at Buffalo guaranteed its victory in its rivalry with Black
Rock, and after the canal opened on October 26, 1825, Buffalo became
the de facto transshipment point for goods moving between the Midwest through the lakes to New York and ocean trade.
In addition to becoming the transshipment point for goods and raw
materials, Buffalo witnessed the passage of hundreds of thousands of
settlers as they journeyed west as "more immigrants passed through
these street [surrounding the Erie Canal] during the height of the
canal era (1830-1865) than passed through Ellis Island." In April 1832 Buffalo was incorporated as a city; its boundaries were North-York streets (now Porter Avenue) on the north, Jefferson Street on the east, and the Buffalo Creek reservation on the south
with Buffalo Creek its approximate southern boundary. Areas beyond the
city’s southern limits remained Seneca land as part of the Buffalo
Creek reservation until 1842. However, little settlement had occurred
south of the Buffalo River by 1847.
Few structures stood near the waterfront area prior to 1825, when
Thaddeus Joy and George B. Webster erected a wooden warehouse and a
wharf on the west side of Main Street east of Little Buffalo Creek
(what is now the re-watered Commercial Slip) in the winter of
1824-1825. Joy and Manly Colton erected a two-story frame store on a
lot on the west side of Main Street near corner of Prime and Hanover
streets. This structure joined Winthrop Fox’s store, which had been
built in 1814, and John Scott’s warehouse, erected near the foot of
Main Street in 1816. Below the steep bluff where the Terrace was
situated, Little Buffalo Creek “was a dark, muddy, sluggish looking
stream, grown full of water grass and water lilies, besides having its
surface pretty well covered with green frog spawn. Its banks were also
tolerably well lined with a stinted growth of scraggy thorn trees and
alder bushes.
A manufacturing center emerged adjacent to the southeastern end of the Downtown survey area. In 1827, the Buffalo Hydraulic Company
or Association was formed to fund the damming of Little Buffalo Creek
and creation of an associated canal. Completed in 1828, the canal ran
for approximately four miles between Little Buffalo Creek and Big
Buffalo Creek, and was partly within the Buffalo Creek Reservation,
east of the survey area. "A saw-mill, a grist-mill, woolen factory, hat
body factory, last factory, and brewery, were built, which were
operated for some years, and quite a settlement grew up in that
vicinity." By 1836 the Hydraulics, located along the eastern edge
of the recently incorporated City of Buffalo, were reported to have
become a village of 500 inhabitants and was the site of three saw
mills, a woolen factory, a pail factory, a factory for turning bed
posts, a grist mill, a brewery, and a tannery. In 1850, Gardner’s
tannery was located west of the former reservation boundary north of
Seneca Street near Little Buffalo Creek and the Hydraulic Canal.
Lumber, logs, livestock and grain were shipped via the canal, which
also served as the sewer for adjacent tanneries and slaughterhouses.
The discharge of waste into the canal became a problem by 1851,
resulting in the canal’s filling prior to 1884.
The Erie Canal ended in the Commercial Slip on the west side of
Main Street at the confluence of Little Buffalo Creek and Big Buffalo
Creek (now, the Buffalo River). Other waterways were constructed in
this area to augment both the capacity and water flow of the canal, and
included the Main and Hamburg Street Canal, the Clark and Skinner Canal, the Evans Ship Canal, and the Ohio Basin. The Main and Hamburg Street Canal
contributed to the city’s success as a manufacturing center. As early
as 1833, the construction of a water linkage from the Erie Canal to The
Hydraulics (land in proximity to the Hydraulic canal) was discussed,
but was slow to bear fruit. Officially opening in 1852, the Hamburg canal ran north of Scott Street and paralleled Buffalo Creek, connecting to the Hydraulic Canal
at Hamburg Street. Three years later, the city declared the canal a
nuisance because of stagnant water at its eastern extremity.
Subsequently used as a sewer, the canal was filled prior to 1901, and
was part of Lehigh Valley Railroad property. The location of the
Main and Hamburg Canal is partially under what is now the former
location of the Memorial Auditorium (“Aud”), the Donovan Block (the
present Phillips-Lytle Building), and the Niagara section of the New
York State Thruway (I-190).
The Clark and Skinner Canal was constructed between 1841 and
1846 and connected Buffalo Creek and the Main and Hamburg Canal. It ran
parallel to and east of Mississippi Street in what would become
Buffalo’s industrial First Ward, and was located between two of the
largest railroads that entered Buffalo at the end of the nineteenth
century: the Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western (DL&W) and the Lehigh Valley.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the canal produced “unsavory
odors” and was considered a danger to public health. According to a
newspaper article of the day,
From Perry Street north to Scott
Street the stream is a bogmire. The wharfage on the west side upon
which the plant of Schoellkopf & Company’s tannery is located is
dilapidated and in many places entirely washed away. Much refuse has
been dumped into the slip, contaminating the water and making it a
public nuisance. From Perry Street south to Elk Street, and even as far
as the Buffalo River, the slip is in somewhat better condition.
West of Main Street at the southwestern end of the Downtown survey
area, the Evans Slip or ship canal was constructed between 1831 and
1834 and attained its formal name—the Evans Ship Canal—in 1853 as part of an overall renaming of Buffalo waterways. In 1842, Joseph Dart
constructed the first steam-powered grain elevator south of the slip at
its junction with the Buffalo River. The original elevator burned in
the early 1860s, a hazard that afflicted many of the early wooden
elevators, and the site on later historical maps is identified as
Bennett’s elevator. Elevators were located on both sides of the Buffalo
River, the Evans Ship Canal, and the City Ship Canal by the early twentieth century.
During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, both the federal and state governments aided
the effort to improve access to the harbor and increase its capacity.
These efforts included improvements to the South and North Piers,
construction of a seawall along what is now referred to as the Inner Harbor, and breakwalls on what is now the Outer Harbor.
In addition, a dry dock "with a marine railway, powered by a
horse-turned capstan, [that] was built opposite of Ohio Street in 1836
and a steam-powered yard opened nearby soon after. A large dry-dock opened in 1838, was enlarged in 1844 and enlarged again in 1848."
The Ohio Slip joined the Main and Hamburg Canal with the spacious Ohio basin.
The Ohio Slip extended about one half mile and the basin was
rectangular measuring approximately 600 feet by 1,000 feet. It was
connected to the Buffalo River by a short outlet. The slip was
completed in 1850, and the basin in 1851-1852. The Ohio Basin served as
an important transshipment point for cargo transferred from lake boats
to canal boats. By 1905, the Ohio slip was filled in as far south
as Elk street and was open beyond that point. Like the other waterways
in this area, it suffered from a lack of current and was declared a
health hazard in the 1930s and was gradually filled in.
New arrivals in the city required places to stay as they either sought
employment or waited for the lake vessels to carry them, their family,
and their belongings farther west. Hotels, boarding houses and "temperance houses"
proliferated throughout the Canal District in the southern portion of
the Downtown survey area. Other hotels as well as boarding houses were
scattered east of Main Street into the old First Ward, south of what is
now Exchange Street.
The owners of the commercial shipping establishments (e.g., the
so-called forwarding and commission merchants) became successful
economically with the completion of the Erie Canal, and their success
carried over into the civic arena. As successes, these entrepreneurs
were the leading citizens of community (along with bankers and
builders) and several became mayor of the City of Buffalo—Ebenezer Johnson, Hiram Pratt, Samuel Wilkeson, Sheldon Thompson, and William G. Fargo.
Accompanying increasing immigration, commerce, and overcrowding on the waterfront, cholera
struck Buffalo periodically between the 1832 and the mid-1850s. The
Canal District served as the epicenter of the illness with more
virulent outbreaks occurring in 1832, 1834, 1849, and 1854. Of course,
the transient population of immigrants passing through Buffalo’s
waterfront took the blame. During the first outbreak in 1832 (the year
of Buffalo’s incorporation as a city), “The death carts would patrol
the streets, and when there would seem an indication of a death in a
house, the driver would shout “bring out your dead.” Bodies
were not permitted to remain unburied over an hour or two, if it were
possible to obtain carriers, or a sexton to bury them.
During the virulent cholera outbreak that afflicted the lake-port city
in 1832, the city council enacted stringent sanitary regulations in an
attempt to mitigate the outbreak, which included the prohibition of
burials in the city’s Franklin Square cemetery (downtown). Part of these efforts was the purchase of remote land outside the city boundaries for the creation of a cemetery for cholera victims.
At the time, North Street (formerly Guide Board Road) was Buffalo’s
northern boundary, and other cemeteries were arrayed along it. At least
six other cemeteries were located in the northern part of the city or
just north of the city line through the 1850s. Forest Lawn Cemetery was established in 1849.
Located south of Perry Street between Main Street and Michigan Avenue, the so-named "Cobblestone District"
is south-southeast of original Village of Buffalo that was razed during
the War of 1812. During the nineteenth century, this area was part of
the industrial First Ward, and was traversed by waterways built to
augment the Erie Canal (e.g., the Main and Hamburg Canal, the Clark and
Skinner Canal, and, farther to the east and south, the Ohio Basin and
Slip. Largely vacant until the 1840s, the area contained warehouses and
several small iron-working industries, although the streets closest to
Main Street and the Buffalo River were developed initially. For
example, Beals, Mayhew & Company established the first machine shop
and foundry in the village in 1828 (at Indiana and Ohio streets) and
the Webster Block along Main Street was erected in 1835.
The Cobblestone District witnessed more dramatic development
during the second half of the nineteenth century, as small
manufacturing operations proliferated in the area through utilization
of the canal and, later, the railroads. Buffalo Steam Engine Works, at Washington and Indiana streets, where the HSBC Atrium is situated, was formed in 1841, and became George W. Tifft, Sons & Company in 1857. It manufactured steam engines, boilers, and machinery as well as performed other iron work. Eagle Iron Works and Jewett & Root Stoveworks
together occupied the Mississippi-Perry-and-Ohio streets block along
the Clark and Skinner Canal by the mid-1850s. Eagle Iron Works
manufactured cast-iron architectural elements, while Jewett & Root
made stoves. By 1850, Bush and Howard operated a tannery along the Main and Hamburg Canal at Chicago Street. A.H. Brown erected
a brass foundry and machine shop at 120 South Park Avenue ca. 1872, and
prepared work for “tanners, brewers, and others, and made a specialty
of railroad and steamboat brass castings." Buffalo Scale Company
was organized in 1860 and, by the 1880s, was making 19,000 scales a
year, including railway truck, wagon, hopper, motor truck, and platform
scales .
In the 1850s, other industries in this area included F. Collignon brass works, John C. Jewett manufacturing plant, F.S. Pease’s Buffalo Lubricating Oil Company, and Thomas Clark’s Red Jacket Distillery. Founded in 1849, John C. Jewett Manufacturing Company, Inc. made
household items such as iceboxes, bathtubs, birdcages, and spittoons,
and was a pioneer in home refrigerators. Later in the 1940s, it became
a specialist in medical refrigeration.
The canal’s economic impact and the harbor’s prosperity were reinforced in the 1840s by Joseph Dart.
As noted, Dart perfected a steam-powered grain elevator and system for
removing grain from the holds of ships, revolutionizing grain shipping
and handling. 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 ports of New
York, Boston and Philadelphia. Beginning at the Evans Slip in 1842,
construction of numerous grain elevators transformed Buffalo into one
of the leading grain shipping centers in North America. By 1863, 27 grain elevators
enshadowed Buffalo’s harbor and were part of an extensive
transportation network and developing industrial economy that included
shipping of grain, lumber, livestock, iron, and limestone as well as
finished products.
By the later nineteenth century, the waterfront area between Washington
Street and Michigan Avenue (the Long Wharf) including areas on the
south side of the river on Kelly Island became the heart of the
elevator district. In addition, numerous other businesses served the
area, including ship chandlers, grocery stores, and the offices of
various tug and passenger lines.
The Canal District was a warren of closely huddled, dirty,
wooden buildings and included large, wooden grain elevators and grain
drying houses. These areas were scenes of periodic fires during
the nineteenth century. In the early 1850s, several extensive
conflagrations leveled a large portion of the Canal District. In
September 1851, more than 200 buildings burned north of Evans Street,
and in October 1853, more than 100 buildings burned between State
Street and Evans Street. While these incidents resulted in the erection
of more brick buildings along the waterfront, it did not curtail the
incidence of fire. In September 1862, a fire in a grain-drying house at
Water and Norton streets spread to the nearby Evans and Sterling
elevators, destroying both the elevators and their contents.
Undeterred, the fire spread north across the Evans Ship Canal to Evans
whiskey warehouse and office, and south across Norton Street to Bell’s
foundry, Klein & Dobson’s pump and block factory, and the tenements
on Fly, Evans and LeCouteulx streets. Between 30 and 40 buildings were
destroyed, as were 13,372 bushels of wheat, 40,000 bushels of corn, and
28,690 bushels of oats, but much of Evans’ whiskey was saved. Despite
the problems with periodic fires, Buffalo’s waterfront supported 25
elevators (referred to as “elevating warehouses”) with a storage
capacity of 5,855,000 bushels in 1867. The economic success of the Erie
Canal heralded a dramatic increase the area’s population expansion and
social change with the arrival of immigrants into Western New York.
East and North of the Canal District.
In the years before the Civil War, Buffalo’s economy revolved around
the transshipment of goods and raw materials, and geographically
centered on the waterfront in the western part of the city. As a
result, businesses and residences were concentrated in the area west of
Main Street, and the city’s eastern portion was largely vacant,
especially the area east of the businesses along Main Street and north
of Seneca Street.
Settlement expanded east of what is now Michigan Avenue
beginning in the late 1820s. First, the trees were cleared east of the
location where Michigan Avenue crossed the former Buffalo Creek (later,
the Main and Hamburg Street Canal). This area, south of what is now
Exchange Street, at one time was home to otter and beaver populations.
“Far from the docks, but walking distance from most industrial sites
and the central business district, much of the East Side was a flat,
wet meadowland with stands of willow and oak. At its furthest reaches,
there were particularly thick forests.". The East Side was home to
Buffalo’s black residents as well as its German immigrant settlers.
In the early 1830s, Buffalo’s small black community (numbering
less than 100 at that time) lived east of the expanding business
district along Main Street and the well-to-do residences along Oak and
Elm streets and, where many of them worked as domestics. They
established the Vine Street African Methodist Episcopal Church (on Vine and Washington streets) and, in 1845, erected the Michigan Avenue Baptist Church (on
Michigan near Broadway Street). The current Michigan Street Baptist
Church served as one of the stations on the Underground Railroad.
Later, by the beginning of the Civil War, approximately 500 blacks
lived in Buffalo, "many of whom were fugitive slaves or their
descendants." By the middle decades of the nineteenth century,
Buffalo’s "black community had become a significant center of free
black life in America, a hotbed of abolitionism and the final stop on
the renowned Underground Railroad to freedom in Canada."
As the city’s black population was putting down roots in the East Side, Buffalo witnessed a huge influx of German-speaking immigrants
in the 1840s and 1850s. These settlers also moved into the East Side
beyond Michigan Avenue north of Batavia Street (now, Broadway). The
Germans also moved northward into what would become the Fruit Belt (the
area where the streets were named after fruit trees) and eastward along
Genesee Street after the mid-1850s. As a result, this area became
filled with an extensive array of small, artisanal shops (e.g., chair
makers, harness makers, tailors, shoemakers, butchers, and bakers)
operated by Germans. In addition to their distinctive shops, the
Germans also brought their own social institutions, such as their beer
halls, lodges, churches, and theaters. Further,
[t]he
principal north-south streets in the densely populated
Deutschendorfchen (German village)—Michigan, Ellicott, and eventually
Main, too,—would contain, as time passed, the imposing residences of
affluent German merchants, shopkeepers, and manufacturers, while the
east-west boulevards—Genesee and Batavia [now Broadway]—were packed
with German groceries, artisan shops, and working-class residences.
With its foreign character, this area seemed exotic to Americans, a
transplanted European town, “as little American,” said the Commercial
Advertiser in 1857, “as the duchy of Hesse Cassel.”
Scattered among the Germans, however, was one of the oldest of American
populations: a large percentage of the city’s small, stable black population—about
704 persons in 1855. Though not ghettoized, blacks were never allowed,
as gradually their German neighbors were, to enter the city’s
mainstream. They were in their own public school, barred from voting, unless able to meet a fifty-dollar poll tax, under state law, and able to find employment only as menials and service workers.
During this period, Buffalo’s population rose from 29,773 in 1845 to 74,214 in 1855, with more than 60 percent of the population foreign born. In 1853, the City of Buffalo extended its boundaries, annexing the Town of Black Rock and receiving a new city charter.
The Railroads and Late Nineteenth-Century Development.
The arrival of the railroads fostered continued economic
diversification of Buffalo and was vital for the importation of iron
and coal from the mines of Pennsylvania. Economical lake transportation
of ore to Buffalo enabled the shift of the city’s commerce-based
economy to a manufacturing economy. The Civil War stimulated the iron
and steel industry and, by 1864, 24 foundries and machine shops
were located in Buffalo. The trend toward heavier industry intensified
after the Civil War. Soon after, iron and steel manufacturing would
become the backbone industry of the City of Buffalo. In the 36 years
between the end of the Civil War and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, the population of the city jumped from 94,210 to 352,387.
The New York Central Railroad reorganized its operations in the city by consolidating and relocating several stations. Beginning operation in July 1883, the Belt Line used
the network of interconnected tracks to create a commuter passenger
line that encircled the city. A total of 2,100 passengers were served
in the first week. "In 1885 twelve trains ran counter-clockwise from
Exchange Street beginning at 5:55 A.M., and thirteen clockwise ending
at 7:45 P.M. In those halcyon days one could circle the city for a
nickel."
The extension of the Belt Line fostered industrial and
residential development in the sparsely settled areas in the city’s
northern and eastern limits, initiating a process of drawing residents
and businesses away from the city’s central core. Workers, at a time
when public transportation was irregular or nonexistence, tended to
live near the places at which they were employed. This practice
continued into the early decades of twentieth century when
transportation was improving. Moreover, industries were liberated by
the railroads from the necessity of locating near the waterfront or the
canal to transport their goods. The advent of hydroelectric power
at the turn of the nineteenth century also facilitated this transition.
As industry sprouted in the sparsely settled areas of the East Side,
Black Rock, and North Buffalo near the Belt Line, workers followed.
Establishment of the electric street railway and interurban
lines at the end of the nineteenth century expanded residential
opportunities and reinforced the accessibility of the Buffalo’s park system, elements of which were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted,
by city’s residents. By 1900, 25 streetcar lines paralleled city roads
(along with 87 miles of track) connecting downtown Buffalo with
outlying neighborhoods in all corners of the city. In 1902 the electric
railway was consolidated with other streetcar lines to form the International Railway Company.
As railroad transportation supplanted the canal systems as a means of
moving peoples and goods around, the success of the electric railways undermined the profitability of the Belt Line,
which stopped passenger service during World War I. The electric
railways would, in turn, be undermined during the 1920s and 1930s by
the successes of automobiles and buses.
In the years after the Civil War, Buffalo harbor and old First Ward
area saw continued growth in commerce and industry. In addition to
grain elevators and other shipping and mercantile endeavors along the
river, ancillary and service-related businesses spread from the
intensively developed Canal District over Main Street into the
Cobblestone District and up Main Street into the formerly residential
areas. These enterprises included office buildings, banks, insurance
and legal services, barber shops, groceries, storage depots, and
railroad-related structures, as well as soap and bicycle factories,
distilleries, brass works, ironworks, tanneries, and oil warehouses. Lafayette Square and Niagara Square became hubs of commerce and government.
Iron-making became an important Buffalo industry during the
nineteenth century. Iron manufacturers in the city prior to the Civil
War included the Buffalo Engine Works, Buffalo Rolling Mill and
Iron Works, Howard Iron Works, Niagara Forge, and E. & B. Holmes
Machine Corporation on Chicago Street. Iron ore smelting
began in Buffalo around 1860. The Civil War stimulated the iron and
steel industry and, by 1864, 24 foundries and machine shops were
located in Buffalo. As a citizen of the new iron age, William Wendt founded the Buffalo Forge Company
in 1878 to manufacture a portable blacksmith forge at the corner of
Washington and Perry streets. The company relocated to Broadway in
1880. The trend toward heavier industry intensified after the war, and
in 1869 the city held an industrial exposition that featured the
inventiveness of mechanization and production and fostered the idea of
industry as a craft. The introduction of the iron industry at the
exposition provided a stage for the initiation, and subsequent
development, of a new era of industrialization. The railroad was vital
for the importation of iron and coal from the mines of Pennsylvania.
Economical lake transportation of ore to Buffalo enabled the shift of
the city’s commerce-based economy to a manufacturing economy. Soon
after, iron and steel manufacturing would become the backbone industry
of the City of Buffalo.
Worker residences intermingled with industrial and manufacturing
operations along the Buffalo River, adjacent areas to the north, and
along the Belt Line after 1880; there was little to no residential
areas south of the Buffalo River until the twentieth century, except
for the community of squatters along the seawall west of the City Ship
Canal. Businesses in the Cobblestone District included coal yards, Hubbell
stove works, Eagle Iron Works, Wheeler’s malt house, G.W. Tifft, Sons
& Co., Jewett & Root Stove Works, E. & B. Holmes lumber
yard, and Holloway’s stone yard.
In the 1890s, First Ward industries in and in proximity to the Cobblestone District included Buffalo Steam Engine Works (estate of G.W. Tifft), Eagle
Iron Works, Farrar & Trefts Iron Works, Phoenix Boiler Works,
Sherman S. Jewett & Co., Buffalo Upholstering Company, E & B
Holmes lumber yard, foundries and machine shops, Schoellkopf & Company Sheepskin Leather Manufacturer along the Clark and Skinner Canal, Buffalo Scale Works, the Buffalo
Fish Company, the Lehigh Valley Railroad freight house, Eagle Iron
Works, the Onondaga Salt Company, and the American Glucose Company,
which employed over 1,000 men until a disastrous fire devastated the
plant in 1894. (The manufacture of glucose was established in Buffalo
ca. 1873 by Cicero J. Hamlin, and his American Glucose Company
was primary producer of glucose in the United States.) In the 36 years
between the end of the Civil War and the 1901 Pan-American Exposition,
the population of the city jumped from 94,210 to 352,387.
The post-Civil War years marked the combined efforts of the
federal, state, and local governments to improve Buffalo’s harbor and
expand its capacity. These activities included dredging the harbor
channel by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, strengthening of the
harbor entrance piers, the Outer Harbor breakwater, which by
1903 was extended to the Stony Point section of West Seneca (later the
City of Lackawanna), creation of a canal terminal by the state by
enclosing the Erie Basin and linking its breakwater to the Black Rock
harbor breakwater.. By 1900 the mouth of the river was deepened to 20
feet to accommodate the larger lake freighters with capacities of
10,000 tons. About that time the federal government assumed control of
the entrance to the harbor.
Despite these efforts, by the end of the nineteenth century, the
canal-based economy was dying as the railroad surpassed the canals as a
means of transporting goods, and rail lines encircled the Canal
District. The coup de grace for the waterfront and canal terminus was
the laying of a railroad bed down the center of Prime Street literally overnight
in 1883. The DL&W subsequently laid multiple tracks in the street,
demolishing the Hazard Block at the corner of Main Street and the
Central Wharf and ending public access to the waterfront in this area.
The businesses housed in these structures migrated north along Main
Street.
Buffalo became the third largest coal depot in the United States
by 1885, "handling nearly all America’s anthracite coal and a growing
share of its bituminous coal shipments.". Buffalo’s share of the
bituminous coal trade leapt from 327,467 tons in 1874 to 1,921,354 tons
in 1884, and of the anthracite trade from 472,262 tons to 2,451,410
tons during the same period.
On August 15, 1896, the first electric current was transmitted to Buffalo from Niagara Falls. The event led to the gradual electrification of Buffalo industry. The International Railway Company, a local street railway, was the first electric railway in the city in November 1896. In 1897, George Urban’s flour mills were the first industries to be electrified. Moreover, the availability of cheap electrical power served to draw the Lackawanna Steel Company from its home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to the Stony Point section of the Town of West Seneca by 1904.
During the 1890s through the early twentieth century, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad
maintained a freight depot along Ohio Street between the Ohio Basin and
the river between two grain elevators. In the 1880s, the New York
Central supported three passenger stations in the city: one in east
Buffalo (near what is now the Central Terminal); one on Exchange
Street; and one on Erie Street close to the harbor. With the creation
of the Belt Line in 1883, the Erie Street station was replaced by one
on the Terrace, west of Main Street, and the East Buffalo station was
largely abandoned for an improved Exchange Street station.
The DL&W passenger terminal was situated at Main and Dayton
streets from 1885 until 1917, when a new terminal at the foot of Main
Street adjacent to the harbor opened with associated elevated tracks.
The DL&W freight house had earlier been erected along the riverbank
from Main Street to Commercial Slip along Prime Street. The Union Block and the Central Wharf were demolished by the end of this period.
The Lehigh Valley Railroad ran an extensive freight operation
east of Washington Street south of the Main and Hamburg Canal, while
the New York Central operated freight and passenger services east of
Washington Street and north of the canal. In the early twentieth
century, the Main and Hamburg Canal was filled in and structures south
of Quay Street were razed for the construction of the Lehigh Valley
passenger terminal along Main Street on what is now the Donovan Block.
By the end of the nineteenth century, Buffalo was the second leading
railroad terminus in the United States (after Chicago), which had
reduced the economic impact of the Erie Canal to near
irrelevance. As a result, New York State and canal interests believed
another expansion of the old canal was necessary for it to compete with
the railroads. By the last years of the nineteenth century, however,
cost overruns and charges of incompetence caused the movement to
improve the canal to be subsumed into the movement to re-conceive the
canal in terms of the technological changes then-occurring: bigger,
faster, motorized boats. While other portions of the state, including
Niagara County, dramatically widened and deepened a new canal channel,
the City of Buffalo did not, and over the next 30 years the source of
Buffalo’s nineteenth-century economic success would be slowly filled
with trash and buried. The Erie Barge Canal connected to
Lake Erie through the Niagara River, and begins at the junction of the
Niagara River and Tonawanda Creek. Nevertheless, a Barge Canal terminal
building was located at both the Erie Basin and the Ohio Basin in
Buffalo.
Municipal Buildings.
The last decades of the nineteenth century were marked by a boom of
construction. Extending into the early twentieth century, new building
included
the Erie County Savings Bank,
the Prudential Building,
the
Ellicott Square Building,
the Chamber of Commerce Building,
the
Brisbane Building,
the German Insurance Company,
the Library Building,
the D.C. Morgan Building,
the Mutual Life Building,
the Statler Hotel,
the Iroquois Hotel,
the Buffalo Savings Bank,
the Buffalo Evening News
Building,
the Fidelity Building,
the 65th Regimental Armory,
the New
York Telephone Company Building on Pearl Street, and
the Electric Company at Genesee Street and Washington Square.
Part of this post-Civil War construction activity, Franklin Square was chosen as one of the building sites for the construction of city and county offices. In 1875 the City and County Office Building
was finished at a cost of $2 million. Completed in 1875 on Franklin
Square, Old Erie County Hall once served as municipal offices for both
the City of Buffalo and Erie County. City government vacated building
for the present-day City Hall in 1928. A new county office building was completed on the west side of old county hall in 1965.
Niagara Square.
The home of city government in the twentieth century, the buildings
along Niagara Square are located near federal and state governmental
offices, and are just west along Court Street from Lafayette Square and
Main Street and their important businesses and structures (i.e., Ellicott Square Building, Liberty Building, Rand Building, Lafayette Hotel, Buffalo & Erie County Public Library). This general area is effectively marked as the city’s civic center.
Joseph Ellicott’s design for New Amsterdam featured several
areas where streets radiated from a central point. Ellicott had served
with his brother Andrew as part of the surveying team preparing
the federal city of Washington under the plan developed by Pierre
L’Enfant, which featured similar arrangements of streets. Niagara
Square, which is really a circle (as is Lafayette Square), featured
eight streets radiating from it: Delaware Street (later Avenue),
Schimmilpennick Avenue (Niagara Street), Busti Avenue (Genesee Street),
and Cazenovia Avenue (Court Street); the street initially retained
their names entering and leaving the square. Twentieth- century
construction (e.g., the erection of City Hall along the west
side of the Square at the start of the Great Depression) disrupted
Ellicott’s radial plan at numerous locations, Niagara Square being one
of them. Jerge Street and Perkins Street were added after Court and
Genesee streets were interrupted.
During the early nineteenth century this area was a residential area for leading Buffalonians, and included Samuel Wilkeson’s residence, the recently demolished Barker/Chandler House, and later Millard Fillmore house.
During the late nineteenth century, larger hotels and institutional
structures were arrayed around its streets and included the Fillmore Hotel, several educational institutions, and the Women’s Christian Association Building. Beginning in 1907 with the erection of the McKinley monument, the area began to acquire a more civic focus and included the construction of Buffalo City Hall, the Statler Hotel, the Walter J. Mahoney State Office Building, the Buffalo Athletic Club, and the 1936 Federal Courthouse Building (later a post office), among others.
Main Street.
Main Street was extended over Big Buffalo Creek to Lake Erie ca. 1835
and macadamized during the last years of the. Buffalo developer Benjamin Rathbun
erected the Webster Block on the east side of Main Street at the
southern end of the Downtown survey area in 1835, among his numerous
construction projects in the city. During the period 1835-1836, Rathbun
erected 99 buildings, including 52 stores, 32 dwellings and a theater.
Constructed for Joy & Webster, the Webster Block of four-story
brick buildings comprised seventeen stores, wholesale and retail houses
dealing in groceries, dry goods, and other commodities. In addition to
the stores, moderately priced hotels for immigrants and sailors were
constructed in the area and included Huff’s Hotel and Traveler’s Home
at the corner of Main and Scott streets.
Located near the present Erie County Convention Center, the first Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA)
in Buffalo was founded along Main Street in April 26, 1852. This
facility was only the third in North America and the second in the
United States (Montreal and Boston were the first and second sites,
respectively.)
Contributing to this growth was the creation of several horse-drawn, steam, and later electric railways
that ran through the City of Buffalo. A line operated along Main Street
to Ferry Street between 1847 and 1860. The Niagara Streetcar Company
laid iron rails for its cars beginning in 1860, although it is not
known whether the company had the use of Main Street. The Buffalo
Street Railway Company operated a horse-drawn service along Main Street
between Genesee Street and the docks at Buffalo Creek beginning in July
1860. The line was extended to Delaware Park by 1879. By 1884 more than
40 miles of track were in use for streetcars, employing 350 men and 730
horses to operate 120 cars. The International Railway Company, a local
street railway, was the first electric railway in the city in November
1896. The advent of the electric streetcar and the laying of miles of
track helped not only the ability of people to circulate through the
city, but provided an impetus to centralize the business/retail,
entertainment and other commercial interests of Buffalo along Main
Street near these lines.
By 1868 commercial interests dominated the Main Street streetscape and
included a variety of establishments: milliners, grocers, a cutlery
store, hardware stores, banks, a plumber, haberdasheries, dry goods
stores, a confectioner, a furniture store, a tobacconist, a liquor
store, a botanical drug store, and a purveyor of chinaware. Most of
these commercial interests were located in brick or brick and frame
buildings ranging from three to four stories. Areas a block or two from
Main Street also housed a variety of enterprises, including commercial
and industrial ventures, mixed with residences. East of Main Street,
for example, a birdcage factory was documented at 510 Washington Street
and Washington Savings Bank was recorded at 437-439 Washington Street.
A coffin factory, bakery, a boot shop and a book binder were located on
the same block. The Hersee Furniture Factory was first recorded on the
1868 map at the foot of East Mohawk Street, on the east side of
Ellicott Street at Hersee Alley. A brewery also was identified at 20
Broadway and a saloon was located next door. The Machine Shop and Brass
Works was first recorded in 1868 at 46-48 Broadway and a dyers shop was
located at 50 Broadway (Sanborn 1868). The cast-iron front German Insurance Building was erected on Lafayette Square and Main Street in 1875
After the Civil War, the establishments along lower Main Street as well
as those in proximity were a mix of small stores on the first floors
with factories, warehouses and apartments on the upper stories. In
1866, George Moore & Son operated a dairy store at 65 Main Street;
Bush & Howard ran a leather dealership at 91 Main Street; Johnson
& Klein had a dealership of general produce at 93 Main Street; the
Union Stove Works, under the proprietorship of George B. Bull &
Co., operated a warehouse of home furnishings at 95 Main Street (Stone
and Stewart 1866:24- 25). In addition, F.S. Pease sold paint and oil
from his establishment at 61-63 Main Street; F. Colligon ran the Eagle
Brass Foundry from the corner of Perry and Washington streets; and John
T. Noye operated the Buffalo Mill Furnishing at the corner of Scott and
Washington streets.
Beginning in the late nineteenth century, homes in the city’s central
business district were replaced by buildings housing commercial,
banking, and insurance operations as well as light industrial
buildings. At the time, Main Street in the 500- to 700-block area
(north of Lafayette Square) was densely populated with both commercial
buildings and residences. In the 1880s, the Brunswicke-Balke-Collender
Company manufactured billiard tables at its 597 Main Street factory.
In
1893, Seymour H. Knox opened a store at 519 Main Street after
his original store at 409 Main Street was destroyed by fire. Less than
two years later, Knox relocated his five-and- dime to 395 Main Street.
Later, he later merged his store with that of his cousin, who owned
Woolworth’s.
This expanse of Main Street is treated as the Theater District Historic Preservation District.
The Theatre Historic District is centered on the 600 and 700 blocks of
Main Street between Goodell and Chippewa streets and represents the
height of Buffalo’s commercial and entertainment pre-eminence between
the 1880s and 1940s, and includes The Courier Express Building, the former Greyhound bus terminal, Shea’s Buffalo Theater, and Market Arcade.
The area was primarily residential until the middle of the nineteenth
century, and became increasingly commercial during the century as
commercial and manufacturing operations relocated from those areas in
proximity to the waterfront and residential areas moved farther to the
north and east. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth
century this area was home to a prominent jewelry store in the Dickinson Building, the Wurlitzer store in a former carriage factory, a patent medicine factory and convalescent hospital (The Pierce Building at 651-661 Main Street), and the former Pierce Arrow Motor Car Company showroom (in the Vernor Building), as well as numerous theaters, such as Shea’s Buffalo Theater, a former movie house.
As the downtown area drew business and retail enterprises, a boom in
the construction of office buildings ensued, transforming the character
of Main Street from a frame-and-brick, commercial-residential mix to
large, steel-and-stone, corporate offices and businesses. Two
structures erected in 1896 mark the beginning of the transition: The Guaranty Building
(a National Historic Landmark), one of the first modern skyscrapers
designed by Louis Sullivan, located on Church Street in Buffalo; and
the Ellicott Square Building, at the time the world’s largest
office building covering a block comprising Main, Swan, Washington and
South Division streets (designed by Daniel Burnham). In 1904 Frank Lloyd Wright completed the Larkin Administrative Building, the headquarters for the Larkin Soap Company on Seneca Street. The Market Arcade building, designed by E.B. Green and William Wicks, was erected in 1892 and the Brisbane Building on Main Street had been completed in 1895.
The 500-block of Main Street and the three-story commercial
buildings on East Genesee Street represent the small-scale vernacular
commercial buildings that once comprised much of the city’s central
business district. This gradual transformation was replicated for
properties along Washington, Ellicott and Oak streets, and land use
shifted from scattered, small-scale commercial buildings and residences
to a compressed area of large, auxiliary commercial loft buildings and
light industrial buildings. Additions to the city-scape included the Buffalo Savings Bank at 545 Main Street in 1901; the Lafayette Hotel on Lafayette Square in 1904; the Hippodrome Theatre on Main and Huron streets in 1904; the Statler Hotel across from the Ellicott Square Building in 1906; the Sidway Building at 775 Main Street in 1907; and the General Electric Tower
(formerly the Niagara Mohawk Building) on Washington Street in
1912. In the early twentieth century, warehouses were constructed
along Washington Street to support the retail industry, whereas light
industrial enterprises emerged on Ellicott Street.
During the mid-to late nineteenth century, the area west of Main Street shared
a similar building stock of mix of vernacular commercial buildings and
dwellings with that on the east side. However, buildings constructed on
this side in the early twentieth century were distinguished from those
of the east by their location and use. This section of the city became
the retail shopping district as a result of its proximity to the
offices of the financial and government districts of the city. Large
department stores, such as Hens and Kelly, L.L. Berger, Edward’s, and Woolworth’s
replaced smaller commercial buildings on the west side of Main Street.
These multi-storied retail houses extended their operations with either
additional frontage or ancillary storage warehouses on Pearl Street.
During the first half of the twentieth century, businesses associated
with several of Buffalo’s major industries occupied lots between
Broadway and Genesee Street east of Main Street.
In the early twentieth century, while parts of Main Street
attracted corporate skycrapers and business and banking construction,
lower Main Street area saw increased development as part of the growing
influence of the railroad. The Lehigh Valley Railroad constructed a
railroad yard and a station north of the Erie Canal east of Main Street
Twentieth Century
At the beginning of the twentieth century, areas south of Exchange
Street and the Terrace were solidly in rails as both the Lehigh Valley
Railroad and the New York Central Railroad controlled extensive
yards with freight and passenger operations. In 1917, the Lehigh Valley
Railroad opened its passenger terminal on what is now the Donovan
Block. Industries within the Cobblestone District included Case & Son Radiator Factory, at the site of the former Jewett molding shop at Elk and Mississippi streets; Wegner Machine Company at Perry and Liberty streets; the DL&W Railroad freight house between Liberty and Columbia streets; Schoellkopf & Company tannery north of Perry Street between Mississippi and Liberty streets.
The DL&W had laid tracks along the river from Main Street to its coal yards north of Erie Street and the New York Central had a shipping facility near the Coit Slip.
During this period, the freight-carrying capacity of Buffalo’s various
railroads had eclipsed that of the Erie Canal, and areas along the
canal and waterfront declined and became a warren of decrepit
buildings, and towering grain elevators.
In addition to the growth of the railroads, the improvements in
grain-elevator construction methods, the advent of electric power, and
the relocation of Lackawanna Steel to the Lake Erie shore,
south of the Buffalo city limits in what is now the City of Lackawanna,
propelled Buffalo to increased industrial growth and manufacturing
expansion after World War I.
By this time, the commercial areas along the canal had been transformed
into residential areas, with tenements built to house Italians and
other immigrants. 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. In addition, between
1927 and 1937 the Erie Canal was gradually filled, usually with garbage
and debris, although parts of it were still open north of Porter Avenue
in the 1950s.
Although flour had been milled in Buffalo since 1826, flour milling
expanded dramatically during the first decades of the twentieth
century, rising from a few thousand barrels at the beginning of the
century to more than 12 million barrels of flour and 480,000 tons of
wheat in 1930 (1 barrel of flour equals 4.7 bushels of wheat). In 1923,
270 million bushels of grain passed through the waterfront area.
By the end of the 1920s, 39 variously sized grain elevators were
situated along the Buffalo River and around the harbor, including those
operated by Washburn-Crosby (now General Mills), Pillsbury, George Urban Milling Co., and Hecker-Jones-Jewell Milling Co., among others. 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. Near South Park Avenue (formerly Elk Street), east of Michigan Avenue, the H-O Oats
mill complex opened in 1893, with the main mill in operation by 1907.
The facility expanded with buildings erected in 1912, 1928, and 1931,
but was demolished in 2006 for the proposed Seneca Buffalo Creek casino project (which was recently completed).
In addition to grain, in 1928, more than 750,000 tons of anthracite coal
from Pennsylvania arrived in Buffalo by rail for transshipment westward
on emptied grain ships, which also carried iron and steel products and
automobiles. The opening of a deeper and wider Welland Ship Canal in 1932 began to erode Buffalo’s leadership in the shipment of grain.
In the 1920s in general, Buffalo’s vibrant industrial economy attracted other manufacturing concerns, such as the Curtiss-Wright Aeroplane Company
(which employed more than 2,000 people in the 1920s), the burgeoning
automotive industry employed more than 15,000 workers, various machine
shops and foundries employed 13,000, meat-packing industries employed
3,000 workers as did the soap-making industries, but many of these
operations were not located downtown near the waterfront.
The city had a population of 506,775 in 1920. During the 1920s, prominent buildings constructed along Main street included the Liberty Bank Building in 1925; the NRHP- listed Shea’s Buffalo Center for the Performing Arts in 1926; the Rand Building in 1929; and the Courier-Express Building at 785 Main Street in 1930.
At the beginning of 1930s, the waterfront area on both sides of Main
Street south of Exchange Street was considered a slum, especially after
the New York Central Railroad relocated its passenger terminal farther
east. With the station closed, businesses catering to the station’s
clientele fell on hard times. The War Memorial Auditorium was
erected along the west side of Main Street at the former confluence on
the Erie Canal and the Commercial Slip between 1938 and 1940.
The economic expansion during the early twentieth century was felt all
along Main Street and in the northern portion of the Downtown survey
area. For example, M. Wile & Company, retailer of
ready-made, mass-produced men’s clothing, erected a building on the
southeast corner of Ellicott and Goodell streets in 1924. The
four-story structure was designed by Buffalo architectural firm Esenwein & Johnson
and “introduced state-of-the-art industrial architecture into a
traditionally German-immigrant community where it proudly manifested
the rise to success of its German-born owner”. The factory was
erected on the former site of the College Creche, which was the second child day-care center in Buffalo, and occupied the home of Solomon Scheu,
a prominent Buffalo jurist of German descent. “At the time of its
construction by a prominent member of this community [Buffalo’s
German-American] (which made up forty percent of the city’s
population), the M. Wile & Company Factory building ranked as a
landmark of the German section of Buffalo”. By 1920, the firm employed
more than 250 workers. It remained in operation until 1999.
In addition, Trico (Tri-Continental Products, later Trico
Products Corp.) constructed a manufacturing plant along Ellicott and
Goodell streets over a period of about thirty years, with modifications
continuing through their occupancy. Trico was founded by John Oishei in
1917. Oishei and inventor John Jepson developed and manufactured the
first automotive windshield- wiper blades, and ca. 1920 moved their
factory into the former Weyand brewery building on Ellicott
Street. The advent of Prohibition in 1920 did irrevocably damage to the
success of Buffalo’s brewing industry. Christian Weyand, a brewer since
1868, had expanded onto Ellicott Street from Main Street about 1890;
the brewery closed in 1920. The Trico plant on Ellicott Street was an
accretion of buildings, which by 1937 occupied the entire block
bordered by Goodell Street, Ellicott Street, Burton Place, and
Washington Street. The company originally employed 35 workers and it
continued success enabled it to employ more than 4,600 by 1950 (Ross
and Kowsky 2000b). The plant remained in operation until 1998.
While the Belt Line and the interurbans liberated many workers from
residing near their places of employment and provided for the
geographical expansion of businesses within the city, Main Street still
served to divide the East Side from the West Side. So much so that by
the end of the nineteenth century, the area east of Main Street was
perceived as “foreign, exotic, mysterious, and dangerous”; the place
where immigrants and foreigners—Poles, Germans, Irish and Italians—as
well as black and Eastern European Jews lived. Later, as German and
Polish workers followed industry and relocated from the East Side to
Black Rock, among other places, “William [Street] was lined with Jewish
businesses: bakeries, butcher shops, barber shops, bicycle shops, dry
goods stores, clothing stores, tailors, and shoe repair shops (until
forced out by Italian competition, shoe-making was quite a Jewish
business). Almost a dozen synagogues stood in the area by 1920”.
Buffalo’s small black community remained clustered around the Michigan
Avenue Baptist Church and the AME Church and school on Vine Alley.
During World War I, however, black immigration to Buffalo would grow
sharply.
From 1880 to 1920 Buffalo’s population increased from 155,134 to 506,775. During this period, its black population
rose from 857 to 4,511, and to approximately 9,000 in 1925. Much
like European immigrants who had settled in areas where others who
shared their heritage and language lived, black immigrants created a
distinct “Negro” district on the East Side after 1900. “The core of
this area was the established black community in the lower East Side
which by the early twentieth century included William Street, South
Division, Michigan Avenue, and Broadway”. Paralleling the German East
Side during the late nineteenth century, a plethora of black-owned
businesses, including hotels, nightclubs, funeral parlors, cleaners,
drug stores, restaurants, candy stores, saloons, and a theater,
developed to cater to the area’s residents.
During the twentieth century, the residential situation became increasingly segregated.
In 1915, blacks lived in 21 of Buffalo’s 27 wards, although they were
more concentrated in Wards 6 and 7, near downtown. By the end of the
1930s “African Americans increasingly were restricted to two areas of
settlement within the city, the Ellicott and Masten Park districts,
both of which had been recently abandoned by various immigrant groups”.
The city’s black population continued to increase during the 1940s,
drawn to employment opportunities at Buffalo’s numerous industrial
operations, rising from 18,000 to 24,000 between 1940 and 1945, and to
more than 37,000 in 1950. Most of this population increase was located
east of Main Street.
Post-World War II Period
During this period, the grain/flour-products and chemical industries
remained ensconced along the western oxbows of the Buffalo River, while
the steel and chemical industries were located farther to the east
(notably the Republic Steel conglomeration) and the south in
Lackawanna. Despite a seemingly vibrant economy in the 1940s, a long
economic decline for the city had been underway since before World War
II. Near the waterfront, the DL&W coal yard, the J.W. Clement Co. printing plant, and the U.S. Coast Guard base were located at the entrance to Buffalo Harbor, while the Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Co. occupied the former DL&W freight house along the river west of Main Street.
This decline witnessed the gradual relocation of important companies to
neighboring states or outright closure (such as Bethlehem Steel in the
1980s), a decrease of the city’s population from 580,132 in
1950 to 532,132 in 1960, and an increasing suburbanization of Erie
County (the county’s population exceeded one million in 1960).
During the decade of the 1950s more than 80,000 white residents of
Buffalo moved out of the city, while at the same time the number of
black residents increased 36,645 in 1950 to more than 70,000 in 1960.
The area near Erie Street and the Evans Ship Canal saw the construction of the Dante Place public
housing (at one time called Fairhaven Village, but renamed Marine Drive
apartments) between 1950 and 1952. By 1955, most of the former Canal
District structures had been razed, except for the former DL&W freight house
and a scattering of structures along Dante Place. By 1981, all
aboveground vestiges of Buffalo’s historic Canal District had
disappeared. Perry Boulevard was constructed over the former Erie Canal right-of-way.
While the economy slowly declined, a general boom in large-scale,
public construction projects changed living patterns in the city and
region beginning in the 1950s and 1960s. These included the Small Boat Harbor in 1952, the Skyway (the elevated portion of New York State Route 5), which was completed in the mid-1950s (opening in 1955), the extension of the New York State Thruway
into the Southtowns and the construction of the Niagara Extension of
the Thruway (I- 190). As cars replaced trains as the primary mode of
travel, the Lehigh Valley Railroad ceased services in Buffalo
by the late 1950s. Its huge Main Street station had closed 1952 and was
razed in the late 1950s for construction of a new state office
building—the Donovan State Office Building was completed in
1962. It was named for Buffalo-born Major General William J. “Wild
Bill” Donovan (1883-1959). By the early 1960s, many structures within
the formal Canal District and along Main Street had been razed, leaving
large open lots. Structures within the Webster Block were razed by 1970 as part of a waterfront revitalization project.
During the early 1960s, construction of the Kensington Expressway
was initiated to connect downtown Buffalo to the airport along Genesee
Street in the Town of Cheektowaga. The first portion was constructed
between Best Street and Michigan Avenue and the remainder was completed
by ca. 1965. The road was then renamed New York Route 33. During the
late 1970s, one-way ramps (on and off) connected the Kensington
Expressway with Oak and Elm streets. Despite these efforts, economic
decline persisted throughout the 1970s and 1980s.
Beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, large, important
industrial conglomerations continued to relocate to neighboring states
or close outright (such as Bethlehem Steel, Hanna Furnace, Republic/LTV Steel, and Shenango, Inc. in the 1980s), leaving behind the underutilized grain elevators to stand watch over extensive brownfields north of the Tifft Nature Preserve.
By 1965, increasing residential segregation after World War II had
upset the racial balance in Buffalo’s public schools, and a
class-action lawsuit was filed by a group of parents seeking to correct
the situation. It was reported at that time that Buffalo had the fourth
most segregated school system in the North. Federal Judge John Curtinschool system
had to reintegrate. A confluence of misery—poor housing, overcrowding
(Buffalo’s black population had risen to more than 100,000 by 1967), a
lack of economic opportunity, and segregated housing and schools—was
undermining the city, and Buffalo’s black community exploded at the end
of June 1967. Riots
At present, Michigan Avenue is largely a commercial/industrial
corridor, lined with vacant lots and abandoned storefronts. The
southern end of Michigan Avenue has been designated Harriet Tubman Way.
The nearby Ellicott Street is largely a commercial/residential
corridor, lined with vacant/parking lots and structures associated with
the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus (BNMC). The area adjacent to Michigan Avenue and Ellicott Street, north of the Kensington Expressway is known as Hospital Hill and contains three primary medical centers: Buffalo General Hospital (which has been at this site since 1855); The Roswell Park Cancer InstituteUniversity of Buffalo [UB] School of Medicine); and the Hauptmann-Woodward Medical ResearchInstitute on High Street. The 100- acre BNMC also contains elements of Kaleida
Health, UB’s New York State Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and
Life Sciences, and Roswell Park’s Center for Genetics and Pharmacology
(which opened in June 2006), as well as 15 public and private life
sciences and biotech companies. North of Osmose at Ellicott and
Edna streets (980 Ellicott), the one-time site of malt houses of the German American Brewing Company, Ellicott Street becomes residential.
Located along the waterfront, the NHL Edward M. Cotter Fireboat
is located under the Michigan Avenue bridge at 155 Ohio Street.
Designated as Buffalo Engine 20, the fireboat is named in honor of a
former firefighters’ union president. Constructed and launched in 1900
as the William S. Grattan from Elizabeth, New Jersey, the
fireboat “is the only firefighting apparatus that can reach much of
Buffalo’s waterfront”. She also serves as an ice breaker on the
river. It is the oldest fireboat operating on the Great Lakes, and the
oldest left in service in the US.
Despite the departure of several prominent private-sector employers,
construction of prominent buildings continues in the Downtown survey
area during the 1970s and 1980s. Buffalo’s waterfront and areas along
Main Street witnessed the construction several large development
projects, including The Buffalo News building at Washington and Scott streets (1973), the Erie Basin Marina (1974), the Erie County Convention Center (1978), the Naval and Serviceman’s Park and Museumlight rail rapid transit system along Main Street (completed in 1985; which eliminated vehicular traffic from Main Street), the downtown baseball stadiumHSBC Atrium (1990), and what is now the First Niagara Center at the foot of Main Street (1996) .
In the first decades of the twenty-first century, development efforts
to revitalize the waterfront have continued and extended beyond the
historic Canal District to Buffalo’s Outer Harbor. These initiatives have led to the creation of the current Canalside area, which includes the relocated Naval & Military Park and museum, the rewatered Commercial Slip, and the creation of a wharf extending from the Commercial Slip to near Main Street (the location of the nineteenth-century Central Wharf). Further, 2009 witnessed the razing of the Memorial Auditorium for a proposed retail development, and new development continues at present with the reconstruction of the Donovan Building and the construction of the Seneca Buffalo Creek casino near Michigan Avenue and the HarborCenter project across from the First Niagara Center.
ruled that the (founded in 1898 as a cancer research laboratory in the (1979), the roiled the East Side from June 26 through
July 1, shutting the city down. Cars were overturned and burned, store
windows smashed, stores looted, and people shot, although no one was
killed. Also during the period, the grain, steel, chemical, and
automobile industries closed factories and plants throughout the city
and water-borne commerce sank. (1980s; currently named Coca Cola Field), the
