The Buffalo, New York thread: 40 years of renaissance

[Dan]

As inspired by Bear's ongoing Detroit thread, I thought I'd start a catch-all thread for all things related to Buffalo, New York,

What's the deal with the thread title? Well, for the past 40 to 50 years, the city's boosters have pointed to new and planned projects, and maybe slow gentrification in some neighborhood or another, boasting that it's a sign the city is experiencing a renaissance. Many Buffalonians are jaded, though, after seeing so many hyped "silver bullet" projects either fail miserably, downsized to comical proportions, or just not get off the ground.

Starting off with a link: Buffalo Outrage, a Twitter feed mocking Buffalo's exceptionally thin skin. How should Buffalo's boosters feel about this unwarranted jab at the city's psyche? OUTRAGE!

[GButler]

Oh that's good. The red angry face alone is worth following that link. I have to agree with some of the eye rolling there about the recent Anderson Cooper flap. I don't see the outrage in that.

Sadly though, there isn't much talk of a Renaissance, or at least not enough talk of the good things that are happening in Buffalo. Bar stool whining over what silver bullet project didn't materialize, complaining about the lack of white knights, and my favorite, blaming different individuals and groups for the region's current lot, drown out much of the optimism.

[stroskey]

I just looked around streetview in Buffalo for awhile. It seems like Main Street is the cut off point for a lot of things. Why has the west side remained so dense with boutique shops and what looks like good-income residents while the east side is very sparse with a lot of open land? What besides "disinvestment" has caused one side to remain traditional and neat while the others side looks like Detroit.

[Dan]

It's kind of complex,. but here goes.

Buffalo's "Millionare's Row" was Delaware Avenue. Delaware Avenue was centrally located, yet far from the city's industrial corridors and the air pollution that accompanied it. Those who could afford it gravitated around Delaware Avenue, and it formed a corridor of sorts for the city's desirable neighborhoods. East of Delaware, Main Street was fairly wide, and predominantly commercial/semi-industrial. lt provided a convenient barrier that contained the wealthy areas to the west.

The bulk of the city's industrial areas were located near the web of railroads entering the city to the east, along with the Buffalo River. The East Side attracted immigrants from Germany, Poland, and to a lesser extent Italy, because it was close to the factories where they worked. Also, the East Side was mostly flat, and it still contained some semi-agricultural uses from the time it was mostly farmland; dairies, stockyards, and the like. There were a few middle-class neighborhoods on the East Side such as Hamlin Park and the eastern half of University Heights, but for the most part Buffalo's white-collar crowd stayed west of Main Street. The East Side remained predominantly working- to lower-middle class.

Buffalo didn't attract many blacks who moved north in the first wave of the Great Northern Migration; the educated shopkeepers, businesspeople, lawyers and doctors. Buffalo's black population exploded much later, during WWII, when jobs in the region's factories where plentiful. They didn't have the money to move to the areas west of Main Street. The geographic expansion of Buffalo's black population roughly followed the path of the Kensington Expressway; through neighborhoods occupied mostly by first- and second-generation white ethnics, filled with small, affordable bungalows.

Most houses in Buffalo are wood frame, due to the location of what used to be the nation's largest lumber port in nearby North Tonawanda. Frame houses don't age well if the occupants or owners don't have the means to maintain them. I think the East Side would be a much different place today if Buffalo was a brick city; there's certainly be less of an urban prairie.

FWIW, I grew up east of Main, in the Kensington area. The neighborhood remained lower-middle class and racially integrated until the early 1990s. It's a pretty rough place now, although it hasn't been it by the urban prairie pox. My childhood street.

There's still a few white enclaves east of Main: the blue-collar Kaisertown (Polish) and Lovejoy (Italian) neighborhoods, and the surprisingly well-off Treehaven area. Treehaven is a strange place; a Detroit equivalent would probably be ... oh, imagine a small chunk of Grosse Pointe Park, with Grosse Pointe Park demographics, that just happens to be in the Detroit city limits.

[hilldweller]

I was in Buffalo last weekend and stayed downtown at Hampton Suites on Delaware. Didn't get a chance to explore the neighborhoods too much, but I did cover some ground walking in the downtown area. Also hung out a bit in Kenmore and Elmwood Village. This was my first trip to Buffalo and I was definitely impressed by what I saw. For all the talk of Buffalo's decline I certainly didn't witness too many of the signs of it. I gather the more troubled areas are in the neighborhoods to the east and west; Buffalo's central spine, if you will, between Delaware Ave. and Elmwood from the downtown all the way up to the 290 split seemed to be in pretty good shape. In fact that was the way we went to Niagara Falls- straight up through the city. Great mix of uses and even some decent retail you would only expect to find in the suburbs of a city like Buffalo that's seen better days. The Kenmore area in particular seemed to do a pretty good job of integrating new retail uses while maintaining traditional street patterns.

I have some pictures of the downtown that I'll post here once I get around to it. Buffalo City Hall totally mesmerized me to the point where I almost forgot I was losing circulation in my fingers due to the cold.