All About Buffalo NY

Since a lot of people are visiting to see the eclipse I would like to tell everyone about the city of Buffalo, NY.

Image From Google Earth

1) THE ERIE CANAL

What really got Buffalo started as a city was the Erie Canal. The canal was built across New York State in the 1840s. There was a competition between two towns, Buffalo and Black Rock, as to which would attain the lucrative position of being the western terminus of the canal. Buffalo was chosen and it grew into a city. Black Rock is today a section of Buffalo. 

The canal was made for small wooden cargo boats, pulled by mules on towpaths on each side of the canal. Large ships could not use it and The development of modern steel ships made it completely obsolete. The Erie Canal, from North Tonawanda to Buffalo, has long since been filled in but the Buffalo terminus, on the Lake Erie waterfront, has been recreated as "Canalside".

The Erie Canal climbed the Niagara Escarpment by means of locks, hence the name of the Niagara County city of Lockport. Moving southward from Lockport the canal diggers encountered Tonawanda Creek at Pendleton. From there to North Tonawanda, which became known as "The Lumber City" as a result of the canal, the creek was dredged and widened and used as the canal.

Proceeding westward part of the Niagara River, at Tonawanda, was used as the Erie Canal. A towpath was built out in the river and the water between that and the shore was used as the canal. When the canal was filled in, it was filled in up to the towpath and that is now Niawanda Park.

Image From Google Earth

In the late 1950s, when America's Interstate Highway Network was being built the so-called "Niagara Section" of the Interstate 190, which runs into Buffalo alongside the Niagara River, was built over the Erie Canal which had been filled in. This old railroad bridge, which crosses the I-190, was there when the highway was the Erie Canal.

Image From Google Street View

The place where the Erie Canal met Lake Erie, in downtown Buffalo, has been recreated as "Canalside".

2) THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD

Being on the border with Canada, Buffalo was an important stop on the Underground Railroad in the days before the end of the U.S. Civil War, in 1865. The African-American Heritage Corridor runs along where the Michigan Street Baptist Church is located.

Image From Google Street View

3) MILLARD FILLMORE AND NATIVE INDIAN TRIBES

Millard Fillmore was from East Aurora, to the east of Buffalo. He was never elected as president. He was vice-president when Zachary Taylor died, and wasn't nominated by his own party for the next election. But Millard Fillmore was the president who sent the expedition to open up Japan to trade, which certainly had far-reaching global consequences. He founded the University of Buffalo and his name is seen on a major hospital and prominent East Side avenue.

Another name that is seen all around Buffalo is "Ellicott". Joseph Ellicott was the surveyor who set out the original plan of Buffalo. His brother, Andrew Ellicott, was also a surveyor and he planned America's capital of Washington D.C.

Mark Twain, the famous writer, spent over a year living on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo. He was the editor of a newspaper, besides working on his writing.

Three native Indian names that are seen all over Buffalo are "Seneca", "Cayuga" and, "Iroquois". There was a confederacy of five native tribes across what is now New York State. "Iroquois" was the name of the confederacy. The five tribes, from west to east, were the Seneca, Cayuga, Oneida, Onondaga and, Mohawk. A sixth tribe, the Tuscarora in Niagara County, were added later.

Most of the place names in the area are native Indian names. These include Buffalo, Niagara, Tonawanda, Scajaquada, Ontario, Cheektowaga, Chautauqua and, Lackawanna.

4) GROVER CLEVELAND AND WILLIAM MCKINLEY

The name of "Cleveland" or "Grover Cleveland" is seen all around Buffalo. Images from Google Street View.

As the story goes, Grover Cleveland was from New Jersey and was going out west. On the way he stopped to visit a relative in Buffalo and ended up staying. He became the Sheriff of Erie County, then Mayor of Buffalo, then Governor of New York State, and finally President of the United States.

Grover Cleveland's successor as president, after the second term, was William McKinley. His name is seen all over Buffalo as well. But that is simply because he was assassinated in Buffalo, at the Pan Am Exhibition of 1901. Images from Google Street View. The stone is where McKinley was shot twice.

The obelisk in Niagara Square is the McKinley Monument. The building at the far right is where I became a U.S. citizen. 

Roswell Park, Buffalo's well-known cancer hospital, was actually the name of a surgeon who insisted on finishing an operation that he was undertaking in Niagara Falls, when informed that the president had been shot, then rushed to Buffalo by train and tried to save William McKinley. Roswell Park started a cancer research laboratory that later grew into the hospital. Image from Google Earth.

There are, of course, many stories about Grover Cleveland around Buffalo. One that I remember reading is that the relative in Buffalo owned a farm. There was a trail along which the cows walked out to pasture. As Buffalo grew that trail became a street. Today it is Allen Street. Image from Google Street View. 

5) GRANARIES

Aside from the Erie Canal, which brought cargo on small boats from the east, Buffalo happened to be at the eastern end of Lake Erie. Since ships couldn't go over Niagara Falls, Buffalo was as far east that large ships from the Midwest could go on the Great Lakes. The result was that Buffalo became a center of grain and flour milling. It shouldn't be surprising that there were a lot of baking and brewing operations around Buffalo.

The opening of the new Welland Canal in 1959, across Canada making it possible for ships to go all the way to the sea, changed that but the silos and flour mills along the waterfront are still a prominent part of Buffalo. Most of the grain silos are located on the peninsula between the Buffalo River and the ship canal.

Image From Google Earth

Each of the structures indicated by a red dot in the following image from Google Earth is a major grain elevator. The elevators are along the Buffalo River so they can be loaded by ship with grain from the Midwest.

Some of the grain elevators in Buffalo are considered as historic landmarks. The Great Northern Elevator was the largest in the world when it was completed in 1897. But in 2021, during a severe windstorm, much of the facing wall in the following image from Google Earth can be seen to have collapsed and the entire grain elevator has since been demolished.

6) STEEL

Just as ships brought grain to Buffalo to be milled into flour, they also brought iron ore to be made into steel. South of the flour mills, in the suburb of Lackawanna, were the steel mills. The city of Lackawanna is actually named for the steel mill that located there. Since cars are made of steel it made sense to locate major auto factories near the steel mills and there is General Motors in Tonawanda, Ford in Blasdell, and now Tesla in South Buffalo. Another thing that Buffalo had going for it is good rail connections, raw materials were brought in by ship and finished products went out by rail. This is the steel mills along the Lackawanna waterfront.

Image From Google Earth

7) LAKE EFFECT SNOW

Buffalo is, of course, known for snow. Sometimes it snows, and sometimes it is cold, but it certainly isn't like that all the time. There are typically many mild days during a Buffalo winter. What happens is that the prevailing wind is from the west. The elongated Lake Erie has it's long axis aligned close to east-west, and Buffalo is at the eastern end of it. 

In the following image from Google Earth Lake Erie is indicated by the red dot and Buffalo by the purple dot.

Water retains heat longer than air so when the air is cold but the water is still warm water evaporates from the lake but the cold air can't hold it for long, since cold air can hold less humidity than warm air. The result is the water in the air falling as snow on Buffalo. The areas to the south of Buffalo are more in line with the direction of the prevailing west wind across Lake Erie, and so tend to get even more snow than Buffalo. This is known as "Lake Effect Snow".

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and thus is the only one of the lakes that freezes over if it gets cold enough. When that happens the Lake Effect Snow abruptly stops, since water will no longer be evaporating from the lake, although there may still be snow from wider weather systems.

8) THE INFLUENCE OF PARIS ON BUFFALO

I find that the alignment along Court Street, in Buffalo, as seen from above the Central Library, looking westward past the obelisk of the McKinley Monument to City Hall is very reminiscent of Paris. Look at this alignment along Court Street, Paris couldn't have done this any better. 

The square in the foreground, with dark green trees, is Liberty Square. The square in the background is Niagara Square. Court Street terminates at City Hall, indicated by the white dot, in center background. The green dot indicates the former Statler Hotel. The red dot indicates the Rand Building, the purple dot the Liberty Building and, the blue dot the roof of the Main Place Mall.

Image From Google Earth

9) THE INFLUENCE OF THE KREMLIN ON BUFFALO 

In the Kremlin's Cathedral Square the Ivan the Great Bell Tower is joined to the attached Cathedral. Image from Google Street View.

In exactly the same way the Electric Tower of downtown Buffalo is attached to the rest of the building. The lower section of both the Electric Tower and Ivan the Great Bell Tower are octagonal in form. Both have four sections above that and both structures are close to the same height. Image from Google Earth.

The Electric Tower was built in 1912, at the time of the Romanov Dynasty. Unlike the Ivan the Great Bell Tower it does not have a gold dome at the top. But there is a gold dome at the M&T building across the street. Image from Google Earth.

10) THE ARRIVAL OF IMMIGRANTS

Main Street is the "equator" of Buffalo, just as Fifth Avenue is for Manhattan. Major east-west streets are named such as "West Ferry", to the west of Main Street, and "East Ferry", to the east of Main Street. Main Street also divides Buffalo into the "West Side" and the "East Side".

Immigrant groups that arrive in Buffalo tend to settle on either the East or the West Side. What I find striking is how different the two sides look from above. Clearly the West Side is the "original" Buffalo while the East Side was built to house immigrants in the late Nineteenth Century.

Image From Google Earth

There are many German and Polish street names on the East Side, which is now home to Buffalo's black community. Italians settled on the West Side, which is now Buffalo's Puerto Rican community. We can tell that the West Side was the "original" Buffalo, already established when the waves of immigrants came, because the streets of the West Side don't have Italian names in the same way that the East Side has many German and Polish street names. More recently, communities from Myanmar, Somalia and, Ethiopia have settled on the West Side, while Bangladeshis have settled on the East Side.

South Buffalo was the city's Irish neighborhood. What is so different about this, in contrast with the other late-Nineteenth Century immigrant groups is that South Buffalo is still very much Irish.

It was during the presidency of William McKinley that Puerto Rico became a U.S. possession. Could he have imagined that someday, around the place where he would be assassinated, there would be a thriving Puerto Rican community?

11) HUMBOLDT PARKWAY AND THE KENSINGTON EXPRESSWAY 

Buffalo has several streets with parks along the middle of the street and one-way streets, in opposite directions, on either side. One such example is Bidwell Parkway, on the West Side of Buffalo, which you can see diagonally across the screen in the following image.

Image from Google Earth

On the East Side of Buffalo there was the magnificent Humboldt Parkway. It was built in the same way as Bidwell Parkway. But when the postwar Urban Renewal era came along it was decided to tear out the park and put a highway to downtown there. The highway is known as the Kensington Expressway, or Route 33. The highway divides the East Side of the city, and is possibly the most contentious example of Urban Renewal anywhere.

The one-way streets, in opposite directions, of Humboldt Parkway are still there. But instead of a park there is the highway, at lower elevation, between them.

Image from Google Earth

The Kensington Expressway, which ripped out the park in Humboldt Parkway, has been very controversial since it was built. But has anyone ever thought that maybe the issue was the name of Humboldt Parkway, and of history repeating itself?

There were many German immigrants in Buffalo in the late Nineteenth Century, which is reflected in the German names of many East Side streets. Humboldt Parkway was named for Alexander Von Humboldt.

Alexander Von Humboldt was the founder of much of earth science. He traveled and wrote extensively and, following his death in 1859, his ideas had a great influence on understanding the earth and the natural world in the late Nineteenth Century. The one insight that he might be best-known for is the suggestion that the eastern and western hemispheres, on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, were once together.

Today we know that there was a sliding tectonic collision between what is now Africa and what is now North America. This produced the mountains and ridges of the Appalachians. The land was cut apart by the volcanic spreading along the seafloor of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The land east of the Appalachians was once part of Africa and the Atlas Mountains, in northwestern Morocco, was once part of the Appalachians.

The eastern and western hemispheres were split apart by volcanic magma emergence along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, as seen in the following image from Google Earth. You can see the Mid-Atlantic Ridge as the curving north-south line along the center of the ocean. Iceland is formed where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge pokes above the surface.

The following is the same image with the white line along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The land east of the Appalachians was once part of Africa and part of the Appalachians ended up as the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, as seen in the following image from Google Earth.

Could the Kensington Expressway, which so controversially split Humboldt Parkway, be an amazing example of history repeating itself? The parkway was named for Alexander Von Humboldt and his best-known discovery was that the eastern and western hemispheres, along the Atlantic Ocean, were once together. The two sides were split apart by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

The parkway named for Alexander Von Humboldt was split apart by the expressway in exactly the same way as the continents that are now on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean were split apart by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is an ideal example of history repeating itself. Maybe historical forces were at work and this had to happen.

12) THE 1901 PAN AMERICAN EXHIBITION

The Pan-American Exhibition was a great exhibition that was held in Buffalo in 1901. The exhibition is unfortunately remembered as the site of the assassination of U.S. President William McKinley. It was also significant for it's pioneering display of electric lighting. 

The development of alternating electric current made transmission of electricity over a distance by stepping up the voltage, at the expense of the current, much more efficient. Electricity from Niagara Falls was used for the lighting display at the exhibition. This would not have been possible with direct current because the losses in the transmission lines would have been too great.

The buildings of the Pan-American Exhibition were not intended to last and thus were not made of "real" stone. The temporary buildings were made of fiber covered with plaster. Today the area where the exhibition was held is mostly residential streets. The high school closest to where William McKinley was shot is named for him.

We have to wonder how it might have turned out if the buildings of the Pan-American Exhibition had been made of "real" stone and had been retained after the end of the exhibition. We saw in our visit to "Paris" how much of the central part of that city consists of buildings that were originally built for the several exhibitions that were held there. The Eiffel Tower was built as the entrance arch for the exhibition of 1889, the centennial of the French Revolution. The Eiffel Tower was supposed to be dismantled after the exhibition, but radio broadcasting had begun and it seems that it was the ideal place for a radio antenna.

The only building that was intended to last from the Pan-American Exhibition is now the Buffalo History Museum.

Image From Google Earth

There was a well-known "Electric Tower" at the exhibition, which was dismantled afterward. The Electric Tower Building, in downtown Buffalo, was built in memory of it, but is not an exact copy of it.

Image From Google Earth

13) THE ELECTRIC CHAIR

In the early days of electric power there was a dispute as to whether alternating current or direct current was better for daily use. The advantage of alternating current is that a transformer makes it easy to switch current and voltage. It's difficulty might be the need to get everyone to agree on the number of cycles per second.

The controversy was known as "The War of the Currents". Thomas Edison supported direct current while George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla supported alternating current. The Pan American Exhibition in Buffalo, in 1901, displaying electric power generated in Niagara Falls, did much to establish alternating current.

But there is more to it than that. A Buffalo dentist, Alfred Southwick, got the idea that electricity might be a humane way to execute condemned criminals and euthanize animals. He modified a dentist's chair into an electric chair. The electric chair would require alternating current that had been stepped up to high voltage.

The advocates of direct current were pleased that alternating current was going to be used to kill people because that would make it look sinister and evil. They actively prompted the electric chair. At the Pan American Exhibition, which had been a major boost for alternating current, U.S. President William McKinley was assassinated. His assailant was one of the first people to be executed in the electric chair.

The dentist was also a professor at the University of Buffalo. 

14) CENTRAL TERMINAL

Central Terminal towers over the East Side of Buffalo. The magnificent train station opened in 1929. Various efforts have been made to preserve and make use of the building, which received it's last train in 1979.

Image From Google Earth

15) THE TRI-MAIN BUILDING

The Tri-Main Building is a historic industrial complex in north Buffalo that, at different times, has been used by Ford, the automaker, Trico, the original manufacturer of windshield wipers and, Bell Aircraft, which developed so many of America's military aircraft.

 Image From Google Earth

16) KING SEWING MACHINE COMPANY 

This abandoned factory in Buffalo's Riverside area doesn't look like much today. But it has a central part in the history of Buffalo manufacturing. Image from Google Earth.

It started as the King Sewing Machine Company, and was instrumental in popularizing home sewing machines. Later so many of the radios in homes and cars, before television when radio was very popular, were actually made here, for many different brand names. 

17) WOOD AND BROOKS

Pianos used to be popular and so many of the keys and keyboards in pianos everywhere were made in this building in Buffalo's Riverside area. Some readers may find it unfortunate that, at least initially, the company used real ivory from elephant tusks and there used to be the sign of an elephant where the red dot is located. Image from Google Earth.

18) THE PSYCHIATRIC CENTER

The Buffalo Psychiatric Center is a historic complex that was built in the late Nineteenth Century to house and treat psychiatric patients. It is just south of where the Pan-American Exhibition was held. More recently it has been named the Richardson Complex, for the attempt that was made to preserve it, and much of it was converted into a hotel. The northern part of it's original grounds were used to build Buffalo State College.

Image From Google Earth

If you wonder whether the Psychiatric Center is haunted the answer is "yes", not by a ghost but by a decision that was made there. In 1980 a man felt that his mental health was deteriorating and he sought help at the Psychiatric Center. He was denied admittance. Shortly afterwards a series of random murders of black males began. The man who sought help had been Joseph Christopher, now remembered as "The .22 Caliber Killer" for the handgun that he used. He also committed assaults in Manhattan, where he was known as "The Midtown Slasher".

19) THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, or AKG, is just across Elmwood Avenue from Buffalo State College and the former Psychiatric Center, and just south of where the 1901 Pan-American Exhibition was held.

A wealthy Buffalo philanthropist named John J. Albright put up the money to build the gallery. Albright was an all-around businessman who was behind much of the development of the Buffalo area. Among many other things he got one of the world's great steel manufacturers, the Lackawanna Steel Company, to locate along Lake Erie south of Buffalo. The surrounding area named itself after the factory and is today the City of Lackawanna.

The gallery was supposed to be part of the Pan-American Exhibition of 1901 but the building wasn't completed in time. Decades later another Buffalo philanthropist, named Seymour Knox, paid for an addition to be added to the building. This is why it is called the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

20) SEYMOUR KNOX

When I was a young boy the first I remember hearing of America was a nearby store called Woolworth's. I was told that the store began in a place called America. When I visited as a teenager I bought something back in this bag.

Frank Woolworth emerged, during America's Guilded Age, from a small town near Watertown, NY. In a story of success that represented what America was supposed to be all about he built a chain of stores that defined modern merchandising. Walmart and Target are the descendants of Woolworth's. With the income that the stores brought in Frank Woolworth built the tallest building in the world. The name of Woolworth would later be known for the fortune being squandered by his two profligate grandchildren, Barbara Hutton and Jimmy Donohue.

Frank Woolworth had a relative who was also a good businessman. His name was Seymour Knox and he was based in Buffalo. He had started retail stores also and it was his stores that were the focal point of the Main Street business district.

There was an art gallery that was intended to be part of the 1901 Pan Am Exhibition in Buffalo, where President William McKinley was assassinated. The namesake son of Seymour Knox made a donation to it which is why it is now called the Albright Knox Gallery, AKG. The also namesake grandson of Seymour Knox was one of the founders of the Sabres, Buffalo's professional hockey team.

The Knox family had a palatial home built on Delaware Avenue, which was Buffalo's "millionaires row". Buffalo once had more millionaires per person than any city in America. At a nearby residence vice-president Theodore Roosevelt had been inaugurated as U.S. President after William McKinley had died.

There had been a hockey player in Toronto who sold cars in the off season. One day he had a customer who had a donut store and ended up going into business with him. The hockey player later played for the Buffalo Sabres and is credited for getting the Sabres into the playoffs for the first time. The Sabres management had given him a car. After playing for the Sabres against his former team he drove back to Buffalo in the car. Unfortunately he had been drinking and never made it. He never knew how the donut chain would grow and that someday his name would be on donut shops all around Buffalo. His name was Tim Horton.

21) KLEINHANS MUSIC HALL

Buffalo has a Philharmonic Orchestra, based at Kleinhans Music Hall, on the West Side. Both Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had made speeches there before they were both assassinated.

22) THE CONNECTICUT STREET ARMORY

We have already seen the Connecticut Street Armory, on the West Side of Buffalo, in the posting, "When The Middle Ages Returned" January 2021. In the late Nineteenth Century there was a movement in architecture to imitate the castles of the Middle Ages. The Connecticut Street Armory was built in 1899. While we know that a "real" castle wouldn't have the window space that the armory has because the walls would have to be thick enough to support the enormous weight of the stone above it, meaning that these walls must be supported by an unseen steel frame, the armory is certainly very impressive.

Image from Google Earth

23) OUR LADY OF VICTORY BASILICA

Towering over Lackawanna, just south of Buffalo, is the magnificent dome of Our Lady of Victory Basilica. This was completed in 1926 and there used to be a vast orphanage and school with it.

Image From Google Earth

24) AIR CONDITIONING

Angola is a town to the south of Buffalo. There was an engineer from Angola named Willis Carrier. A Buffalo printing company was having trouble because the humidity was affecting the printing process. Carrier came up with a solution to condition the air. It turned into far more than that, it was the birth of air conditioning. Try to imagine the world without air conditioning, all of the people and business that have moved to cities with warmer climates that wouldn't have happened without air conditioning.

25) WINDSHIELD WIPERS

As the story goes John Oishei was driving along Delaware Avenue in Buffalo in 1916. It was raining and he ran into a bicyclist that he didn't see. Oishei realized that cars needed a way to automatically clear rain from the windshield. The result was the invention of windshield wipers and the founding of Trico, the company in Buffalo that would manufacture them. Oishei's foundation gave money to build a hospital for children, and today Oishei Children's Hospital is just up the street from the original Trico building.

Image From Google Earth

26) THE LARKIN BUILDINGS

The Larkin Soap Company pioneered both mail order goods and also door-to-door sales. The company sold a wide range of soap and household products. It eventually went out of business but it's two expansive buildings, like so many other former companies in Buffalo, now serve other uses.

Image From Google Earth

27) WELLS FARGO

William Fargo was one of the founders of Wells Fargo, one of the largest banks in the world, and also of American Express. He served as the mayor of Buffalo, and a street on the West Side is named for him. William Fargo is buried in Buffalo's Forest Lawn Cemetery.

28) SCHOELLKOPF CHEMICAL FACTORY

The name of Jacob Schoellkopf, and his sons, is more associated with Niagara Falls than with Buffalo. But his business background, starting as a tanner, was in Buffalo. There was the Hydraulic Canal, built across downtown Niagara Falls to power mills by falling water. The company that ran the canal had fallen into bankruptcy and Jacob Schoellkopf bought the canal at auction.

He made the canal very profitable and it was eventually used to generate electricity. The generating plant in the Niagara Gorge, that collapsed in 1956, was named for him. Jacob Schoellkopf later opened a large factory in Buffalo that made dyes used to color clothing. The factory was most recently known as Buffalo Color. One of his sons served as mayor of Niagara Falls.

This building was the powerhouse of the factory.

Image From Google Earth

29) CURTISS AIRCRAFT

Glenn Curtiss was an early pioneer of aircraft. He had a number of industrial sites around Buffalo. The best-remembered is the Curtiss-Wright site adjacent to the Buffalo Airport. The name comes from a merger with the company going back to the original Wright Brothers, who are credited with the first successful aircraft flight. The company produced a vast number of the aircraft that were used in the Second World War. The building was later used by Westinghouse, but has long since been demolished.

30) THE PIERCE ARROW

Buffalo once had it's own luxury car, the Pierce Arrow. The manufacturer didn't survive the Great Depression of the 1930s but the massive building where the cars were made is still in use, on Elmwood Avenue in north Buffalo.

Image From Google Earth

31) THE FORMER WAR MEMORIAL STADIUM

What I find really interesting is how the former main sports stadium of Buffalo, War Memorial Stadium on the East Side, was demolished, but not completely demolished. The entranceways of the stadium were left standing. The site is now an athletic complex, and the entranceways are the entrances to the complex.

Image From Google Earth

32) HELICOPTERS

The suburb immediately east of Buffalo is called Cheektowaga. At first glance there is nothing unusual about the intersection of Union and Losson Roads. There is a McDonald's and a Tim Horton's on one side, and a Rite Aid and a plaza on the other side.

But this location, where the Rite Aid and the plaza are now located, is where helicopters were born. Bell Aircraft used this then-remote place to test and develop helicopters.

This sign is the only indication that anything special happened here.

Image from Google Street View

33) THE CLINTON BAILEY FOOD TERMINAL

The complex of buildings at the intersection of Clinton Street and Bailey Avenue was Buffalo's food terminal. Grocery stores today tend to be chains with their own transportation networks. This terminal was built in 1931 when most grocery stores were local and family-owned. The terminal is next to rail lines and every day tons of fresh produce would be brought in and sold by wholesalers in these buildings to local grocery stores and markets. The food was then sold to the store's customers.

Image from Google Earth

In the 1960s and 1970s Buffalo had it's own version of the Beatles, a band called "The Road". When I was a child there was a song on the radio, "The Grass Looks Greener On The Other Side". When I was older The Road did live music locally, with the song " Music Man".

Another point of interest about Buffalo is that the former president of Somalia, Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, was a graduate of the University of Buffalo. He was a teacher at Erie County Community College. While in Buffalo he lived on Grand Island and worked at the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority and also the Department of Transportation.