Comment on Top Ten Urban Legends in Buffalo by Dan Tasman

A few others I've heard. 1) Robert Moses designed and built Buffalo's expressway system. Blame Bertram Tallamy. See https://www.cyburbia.org/forums/threads/buffalo-new-yorkers-represent.56945/page-4#post-903985 for the gory details. 2) Frederick Law Olmsted believed Buffalo was the "best planned city". The popular interpretation doesn't consider the context. He was basically bragging about his planning and landscape architecture skills. The context of his "best planned city" comment was that his parks and parkway plan would, in his opinion, _make_ Buffalo "the best planned city, as to its streets, public places and grounds in the United States, if not the world." A lot of his writing while he was working on the park system design was very critical of Buffalo. Also, FLO isn't the final word on good urban planning. There was actually some opposition to FLW's parks plan, mostly from Buffalo's German-Americans. Some thought it was a waste of money. (German-Americans were usually behind efforts to block municipal spending for "unnecessary" amenities through the 1800s, and into the early 1900s.). Some thought the plan wasn't fair, because the bulk of parkways and parkland would be west of Main Street. (The East Side/West Side divide goes back long before the Northern Cities Migration.). There was a lot of criticism of Buffalo's _lack_ of good planning that came out of the 1919 American City Planning Institute conference, which was held in Buffalo. When regional planning became a popular issue in the 1930s, papers were filled with articles about the sad state of Buffalo's built environment. 3) Plans to build Metro Rail to UB North were blocked by NIMBYs in Amherst who feared "inner city" residents would ride out to their neighborhoods to steal TV sets. That was Baltimore, not Buffalo. In Amherst, most vocal opposition to Metro Rail came from town supervisor Dan Ward, who felt that growth in Amherst was already straining town resources, and that the town needed more time to accommodate development it already had. Before Ward was elected, town officials in Amherst were generally very supportive of transit plans. There were also objections from residents of the North Bailey Meadows/Eggertsville area, because the "Blue Line" -- yes, the Metro Rail line actually has a color name -- would run on an overhead structure through the area. 4) The International Railway Company streetcar system was a beloved, cherished institution. However, General Motors bought the system so they could replace streetcars with their buses. National City Lines never bought the IRC. The IRC reorganized as Niagara Frontier Transit in 1950. The NFT system was purchased by the NFTA (then mainly a port authority) in 1972. Buffalo was among the last cities in the country to have a functioning privately owned public transit system. Also, news articles and editorials between WWI and 1950 has almost nothing positive to say about the IRC. "It Rattles and Creaks". Letters to the editor about the IRC in the C-E and BEN were _brutal_. Beloved it wasn't. 5) The Main Street pedestrian mall and Metro Rail killed downtown retail. 6) Central Terminal was built in Polonia/Broadway-Fillmore because the New York Central Railroad believed downtown would eventually grow out that far. 7) Buffalo has no suburban residential development before WWII, except in Kenmore and Lackawanna. 8) Every house in the City of Buffalo that was built before WWII was a custom build, lovingly handmade by immigrant master carpenters and craftsmen (from Germany) who worked on great cathedrals of Europe. 9) Every house in suburban Buffalo was mass produced as cheaply as possible, and built with a 25 year lifespan in mind. 10) The Kensington Expressway was intentionally routed through black neighborhoods out of sheer malice, to reinforce racial divisiveness, and to encourage white people to move to the suburbs. 11) Mortgage redlining in Buffalo was targeted specifically towards black residents, with the intent purpose of denying them credit to buy homes.

Comment on Buffalonians Who Lost Their Homes and Businesses to the Kensington Expressway by Humboldt Parkway Demographics – BuffaloResearch.com

[…] This piece serves as a companion to Buffalonians Who Lost Their Homes and Businesses to the Kensington Expressway. […]

Comment on Buffalonians Who Lived on Humboldt Parkway by Buffalonians Who Lost Their Homes and Businesses to the Kensington Expressway – BuffaloResear...

[…] This serves as a companion piece to Humboldt Parkway Demographics. […]

Buffalonians Who Lost Their Homes and Businesses to the Kensington Expressway

Names and addresses of Buffalo property owners whose houses and other buildings were taken by eminent domain and demolished to build the Kensington Expressway.…

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Buffalonians Who Lived on Humboldt Parkway

What were the demographics of Humboldt Parkway before, during, and after the construction of the Kensington Expressway? We're not qualified to answer this, but we hope by gathering these resources together, someone with demographic analysis expertise can tackle the question.…

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Buffalo’s Millionaire Count

Have you heard the claim, "In 1900, Buffalo had more millionaires per capita than any other city in America"? Me, too. Who wants to prove or disprove it?…

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What Happened to All the Old Newspapers?

Why can't I find old newspapers in hard copy anymore? This essay explains what happened in the mid-20th century to American newspapers.…

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Comment on Is Buffalo the Most Segregated City in the US? by Why Your Team Sucks 2024: Buffalo Bills – RealMadrid-futbol.com

[…] cultural melting pot: it’s black, Puerto Rican, Yemeni, Bangladeshi, Burmese, and even Italian. It’s also one of the most segregated cities in America by most metrics, so that diversity is easily swept under the rug and ignored. While “Buffalo” is printed on […]

Did Grandpa own a saloon?

Years ago, while looking up other things in Google Books, I found some annual reports from the New York State Commissioner of Excise online in full text, all pre-dating Prohibition. Here are the Erie County chapters.…

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Comment on Why You Need an Archive.org Account by I Can’t Find A Book Online, Now What? – BuffaloResearch.com

[…] Millions of online books & periodicals here either in full text or borrowable as e-books if you sign up for a free account. Why you need an Archive.org account. […]

Buffalo’s Oldest Surviving Website Turns 30

Today, on its 30th birthday, BuffaloResearch.com offers a detailed guide to finding vital and other genealogical records in Buffalo and Erie County; a free digital library featuring over 4,000 full-text local books; links to over 200 historic and contemporary Buffalo maps; a page featuring online Buffalo city directories, and more.…

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Does Buffalo have the first modern American cul-de-sac?

St. Catharine's Court in Buffalo's Elmwood Village neighborhood was laid out in 1921-1922, a full seven years before Radburn, NJ, generally considered the birthplace of the modern American cul-de-sac,…

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Defeating Porch Pirates

People reporting thefts of packages from porches is a common theme at NextDoor. Having security cameras and filming perps in the act is apparently not a deterrent. Here are some suggestions. …

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Sanditon and Buffalo’s Black History

How are PBS's Sanditon series, now in its 3rd and final season, and Black history in Buffalo connected?…

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Making a Buffalo-Specific Search Engine

Just for the heck of it, I played around with a Google Programmable Search Engine that drills into over 20 websites that feature Buffalo buildings, old newspapers, genealogy, and other historic stuff.…

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Are You a Good Neighbor Behind the Wheel?

Most of you are conscientious most of the time. But when you’re not, you risk maiming or killing someone.…

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How to Insult City Residents

Originally published in the Buffalo News, September 20, 2000 p. B-2. It has since been edited. Illustration from PowerThesaurus.org. My fellow residents of the City of Good Neighbors have probably had this experience many times over. We are somewhere in…

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Comment on Is Buffalo the Most Segregated City in the US? by Sari Guerrieri

Thank you for this excellent and informative piece! I'm a fairly new resident of Buffalo that came from a very diverse area of Long Island (NYC adjacent). From my observations these last several months-- and again, I'm still a newbie, so I readily admit to knowing only maybe 5% of what life here is truly like-- I see diversity in the majority of areas of town, and never would've even *thought* to consider Buffalo a segregated city. (While I heard in the news that the shooter was from an almost all white town and came to that area specifically because of the large Black population, I didn't hear references to segregation in the aftermath.) But wow, what a shocking (and clearly necessary) eye-opener your research is! Yet another insidious form of a continuing racial inequality practice. This info and takeaway will last long after people stop talking about the shooting. Again, thank you.

Comment on Is Buffalo the Most Segregated City in the US? by George Winfield

In reply to <a href="https://buffaloresearch.com/segregated-cities/#comment-335">Sarah Sharp</a>. What I like is her research and insight makes the issue more approachable. The segregated community the killer came from as well as our own needs to be compared, contrasted and discussed thoughtfully. Buffalo was "segregated" back when the black population was only 1% of the entire city, like where the killer came from. Back then though, despite racism, segregation AND slavery (New York State had legal slavery until 60 years before the Civil War) white people in Buffalo DIDN'T massacre the segregated community when they of course COULD have. NOW things are different. Why?

Comment on Is Buffalo the Most Segregated City in the US? by Sarah Sharp

Thank you Cynthia. Makes me itch with more questions about the disparities between the city of Buffalo residents and those that populate the suburbs and surrounding area.

Comment on Is Buffalo the Most Segregated City in the US? by George Winfield

This is an EXCELLENT essay Cyn! Thank you!

Comment on Why Are the Sunday Comics So Bad? by Richard Sullivan

I enjoyed this breakdown especially because I'm old enough to have followed some of these comic strips since childhood. "Bringing Up Father" (Jiggs and Maggie) ran for 99 years, if I recall correctly, and starred a millionaire with ties to his previous blue collar life. It was based on Buffalo's Fingy Conners. I reproduced a panel in my most recent volume 5 of THE FIRST WARD where he absurdly lectures a grain scooper about how it was hard work that made him his millions. Cartoonist George McManus was a suitor of Fingy's daughter and was rejected by her stepmother as unsuitable. His "revenge", and ultimately his own wealth, was the creation of Jiggs and Maggie.

Comment on Why Are the Sunday Comics So Bad? by Ken Shearer

One of the biggest reasons the Sunday comics were so good is because for a long time they were the only game in town for comics art entertainment. Since the 1970’s syndicated cartoonists continually lamented about shrinkage in art size and iron-fisted creative control by the syndicates who had complete power over them. As newspaper revenue continued to shrink, more space was allotted for advertising in the Sunday comics. What became a game changer for cartoonists was the proliferation of the internet and on-line self publishing… along with a continually growing market in high quality graphic novels. Thanks to these new mediums, cartoonists now have a broader platform with more creative freedom than ever before. The features still in the Sunday funnies are to hold onto existing readers, because there are no new readers. The best and brightest among cartoonists are no longer on the Sunday print pages simply because they don’t want to sign on to a sinking ship. Things have never been more promising for cartoonists. Lamenting about the demise of Sunday funnies is like going to an auto show and complaining about the end of the horse and buggy era.

Comment on Why Are the Sunday Comics So Bad? by Glenn Hufnagel

Interesting statistics. It may be that comics readers appreciate the familiar. I subscribe to comicskingdom.com and gocomics.com, and have access to some vintage strips as well. "Krazy Kat" is as zany as ever. "Bringing Up Father" takes me back to the Sunday comics of my childhood, but the worldview of the 30s and 40s is insightful, and the art deco is amazing. "Beetle Bailey" probably had more resonance when most American males had been drafted into the military. The background art reminds me of Fort Dix, NJ. "Spider Man" is currently re-running strips that appeared several years ago. As for strips like "Peanuts," it is interesting how some situations are perennial, and are as fresh now as they were 50 years ago. "Blondie" has updated to the 21st century, though the characters are the same. There are two versions of "The Katzenjammer Kids" available on comicskingdom on Sunday: a current one, which simply plays on the German accent, and the version from the 40s, which is loaded with non-PC stereotypes of African natives. As for Buffalonian comics, just look in the daily news. The two strips printed there are terrible: terrible art, un-funny gags. In the Sunday comics, "Moose Miller" is by a Buffalonian, and endlessly repeats the same tired gags.