Mark Goldman

Mark Goldman - Table of Contents

EXCERPT - Chapter 8: "The Last Days of Offermann Stadium"
City of My Heart: Buffalo, 1967-2020
By Mark Goldman

City of My Heart: Buffalo, 1967-2020
(Published in October 2021)
AVAILABLE IN LOCAL BOOKSTORES.

Forward: by Karen Brady
Introduction: A New York State of Mind
Chapter 1: A Brand New World - Buffalo, 1967
Chapter 2: An Italian Hill Town in Buffalo? How the neighborhood of Black Rock changed my way of thinking about life in the city
Chapter 3: Into the ‘Seventies - How people stared down decline and, with faith in themselves in the future of their community, rolled up their sleeves, went to work and got it done
Chapter 4: Into the ‘Eighties - How a teacher and his students discovered their city… together
Chapter 5: Judge John T. Curtin - Struggling with the challenges of a changing city, helped restore my faith in Buffalo
Chapter 6: The Calumet Arts Café - The arts as a tonic for an ailing downtown
Chapter 7: What Would Grandma Rosie Do? - How everyday wisdom brought sanity to downtown development plans
Chapter 8: The Buffalo Story - History and heritage as the building blocks of community
Chapter 9: Next year in Jerusalem - What? A New Yorker finds his Jewish identity in, where? Buffalo?
Chapter 10: Discovering the Power of Faith, Family and Friendship - In South Buffalo, I learned, you are never alone.
Chapter 11: In the End - The enchanted landscape of North Buffalo and Central Park
Epilogue: A healing heart: Buffalo, 2020

The Last Days of Offermann Stadium

There are few places in Buffalo with as rich a history as Offermann Stadium, a story that we uncovered as part of our Ferry Street Corridor Project. Built by Frank Offermann, the child of a German immigrant family, Offermann Stadium, like Ebbetts and Wrigley fields, was tucked tightly into the dense fabric of the Cold Spring neighborhood. For over forty years Offermann Stadium was a preeminent neighborhood focal point, a place where blacks and whites, who in those days rarely met in public places, came together to celebrate and enjoy the game of baseball. They came to watch the Buffalo Bisons, the minor league team that made their home here. And they came on those weekends when the great Negro league teams---The Kansas City Monarchs, the Pittsburgh Crawfords, the Newark Eagles and the Homestead Greys—came to Buffalo, to Offerman Stadium, on wildly popular“ barnstorming” tours. With downtown hotels off limits to the black ball players, those giants of Negro league baseball—Josh Gibson, Judy Johnson, Satchel Paige, Buck Henry and the rest—rented rooms in the neighborhood, hanging out on neighborhood porches, eating meals at Duke’s Dive and Mama’s Southern-Style BBQ on E. Ferry and the other tiny cafes and bars that filled the side streets. And at night, when the games were over they went to the jazz clubs, the Moonglow, The Colored Musicians Club and the Little Harlem. But times were changing and urban renewal was replacing baseball as the great American pastime. By the late 1950s the City wanted Offermann Stadium. They wanted it for a site for a new school, Woodlawn Jr High School. And so, in September, 1960 Offermann Stadium was demolished. But not before it played host to one last event.

And what an event it was. Sponsored by Buffalo’s preeminent jazz impresario, the son of an Italian immigrant family, a man named Joe Ricco, the show, held over two days in August, featured the greatest jazz musicians in the world: Count Basie and Dinah Washington, Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson and Dave Brubeck. All of them, all right here at Offermann Stadium on E. Ferry between Michigan and Masten. For two days they played and for two days Offermann was packed and for two days the streets of Cold Spring were filled with the sounds of this most marvelous music.

But then it was over and Offermann was torn down and replaced, sickeningly so, in 1964 by Woodlawn Jr., which, as a result of clearly and consciously drawn district lines, became the first legally segregated public school in Buffalo. The enlarged photographs that we mounted on our E. Ferry Street walls told that history. For those interested, those photos can still be seen, mounted on the Ferry Street side of School of Performing Arts.

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