3.2.3 Fougeron/Urban Survey Area

In the years before the Civil War, Buffalo’s economy centered on the waterfront in the southwestern part of the city. As a result, its eastern portion of the city was largely vacant, especially the area east of the businesses along Main Street and north of Seneca Street. With the increasing population of the waterfront area and the areas in proximity to the central business district, some residents moved away from the downtown areas and into what was during the second half of the nineteenth century primarily farm land.

During the 1840s and 1850s, a huge influx of German-speaking immigrants arrived in Buffalo and settled beyond Michigan Avenue north of what is now Broadway. The Germans also moved northward into what would become the Fruit Belt and eastward along Genesee Street by the 1850s:

on the fringe on the central business district ... and immediately adjacent areas at its northern and eastern fringes became densely packed in the 1850s, especially on such major arteries as Genesee and Broadway, with small stores, groceries, saloons, beer halls and gardens, artisanal and small industrial shops, and breweries. Genesee had a horse-drawn street railroad all the way to Jefferson [Street] by 1861. Its lesser, feeder streets, “dirty, unpaved, and crooked,” with poor drainage and a high incidence of death and disease during cholera epidemics, were lined with one-and-a-half and two-story, narrow frame cottages [most of which were single-family residences with a deep backyard capable of supporting a garden or a cow.

In addition to their distinctive shops, the Germans also brought their own social institutions, such as their beer halls, lodges, churches, and theaters.

In 1853, the city extended its boundaries to encompass the Fougeron/Urban Survey area.

The Germans continued their movements along Genesee Street and Fillmore Avenue into these newly residential areas in the 1870s.

The Parade (designed in 1871 and later renamed Humboldt Park [1896]) was one of the three primary parks connected by parkways in Frederick Law Olmsted’s and Calvert Vaux’s vision for the Buffalo park system. Located near Genesee Street and Walden and Fillmore avenues, southwest of the Fougeron/Urban Survey Area, The Parade, the associated Humboldt Parkway (1892), and Teutonia Park between Scajaquada Creek and Floss Avenue were perfectly located for German celebrations and residences sprang up in what was initially farmland. The Buffalo Museum of Science, whose building was designed by Esenwein & Johnson, was located in the Humbolt Park in 1925. (Humboldt Park was renamed for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1977.)

The Fougeron-Urban survey area is the southern-most of the two areas selected along the Belt Line railroad right-of-way. Nineteenth-century maps do not show any structures within the selected parcels of the survey area. While landowners such as J. Fougeron, G. Urban, and L. Leechard were listed as owners of structures along what is now Fillmore Avenue, Fougeron, Urban, and French streets as well as the Belt Line itself had yet to be constructed in this area in 1866. Railroad tracks and Fougeron and French streets were laid out by 1872 and numerous lots had been subdivided. In 1894 Urban Street was cut and several residences and larger structures were erected adjacent to the New York Central railroad tracks, including a planing mill and related structures along Genesee Street and a two long buildings meeting at a right angle the south side of Urban Street. As late as 1915, a “base ball grounds” was located along the east side of the railroad tracks between Genesee and Fougeron Street.

This general area was the location of numerous large farms that, during the 1870s and 1880s, slowly developed into residential communities. Simon Fougeron cut Fougeron Street through his land prior to 1872 and commenced subdividing it into plots. George Urban acquired a large area between Fillmore Avenue and Moselle Street and, after cutting Urban Street through it, erected what would become the Wonder Bread mill and plant at the end of it in 1903.

Other large land owners in this area included Mathias Rohr, Gaius B. Rich, Ebenezer Walden, Guilford Reed Wilson, George Roetzer, John Roehrer, and Alvin Leonard Dodge. Roetzer created the Ciegle Land Company and developed Roetzer, Keefer, and La Tour streets, and later Rohr, Speiss, and Marshall streets prior to 1887. In 1880, Roehrer, whose father was a Best Street brewer, established the Best Street Land Company. He would purchase, subdivide, and develop an area between Jefferson Avenue, Humboldt Parkway, and East Ferry and Best streets (west of the current survey area). Dodge, from an old Buffalo family, subdivided and developed his own large farm between Main and Jefferson, and East Ferry and Best streets, west of the Fougeroun/Urban survey area during the 1870s and 1880s.

The establishment of the Belt Line along with the redesign of the Parade into Humboldt Park fostered additional residential development in this survey area. Although many of the lots had been subdivided for development, most residences clustered near Genesee Street and the Parade. In addition, the railroads and, later, hydroelectric power drew industry and manufacturing away from the waterfront and the downtown area. In the 1880s, factories began to appear along the tracks of the Belt Line. In 1889, a planing mill was established on Genesee Street and the Belt Line crossing by Christian Flierl and Henry W. Kreinheder.  In addition to mill work, the company also served as a building contractor, erecting such structures as the East Buffalo market, several schools, and the shops of the Gould Coupler Company in Depew.

By 1894 more development had occurred in the Fougeron/Urban survey area than the Northland survey area. Likely because Genesee Street was a long-standing thoroughfare of the area, and “The Parade”/Humboldt Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted had been completed at the northwest intersection of Walden Avenue and Genesee Street. Other businesses in this area included the Buffalo Shirt Company (144 Urban Street); General Electric Company (318 Urban Street); National Biscuit Company (216 Fougeron Street); Ward & Ward Inc./Continental Baking Company (356 Fougeron Street); and Valdutten Hofer Sons Inc. shoe factory (974 Northampton Street). Most of these operations opened facilities in the current survey area between approximately 1914 and 1929.

In the early 1960s, the Kensington Expressway was constru cted through Humboldt Parkway, northeast of the Fougeron/Urban survey area, which is generally considered to have destroyed a thriving residential area.