When I arrived in Buffalo, fresh out of Iowa State, it was still a vibrant city, with a busy downtown, the retail shopping center of the area.  However, in 1965 my new hometown was on the precipice of decades of decline, many of the seeds of its decay were shared with other rust belt cities, and I need not dwell on them here.  However, Buffalo had another significant reason for the decline.  Buffalo had historically been the eastern end of Great Lakes Shipping.  Here mills ground grain from the Midwest into flour, and blast furnaces smelt iron ore from Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Unknown to Buffalo the world was changing fast, a significant reason for its decline had been completed six years before I arrived.  The Saint Lawrence Seaway, opening in 1959, had removed the primary reason for Buffalo’s birth as a major city, that is as a hub for Great Lakes shipping.   Buffalo grew from a small village to a city first because of the Erie Canel opening in 1825 and later as a railroad hub. The seaway allowed grain and ore to go cheaply to markets throughout the world.

Now over 50 years later Buffalo is again a growing city with a mixed economy of lighter manufacturing, education, medical care, and research, as well as information sciences. Now, I am retired with time to read, including local history. This year three of the books I read, all by local authors,  addressed local history.  I recommend all three authors and their books as sources to understand the almost 200-year history of Buffalo as an urban center.

The first is, a biography, Albright, the life and times of John J Albright, by Mark Goldman. Who is this man who we know by a building: the Albright-Knox Art Gallery? He came to Buffalo from Pennsylvania scouting for a new location for the Lackawanna Steel company, later sold to Bethlehem Steel.  He then moved on to both banking and electric power generation.  By 1895 he was on the board of the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, and lead a drive to establish the home for the academy, which would bear his name.

Later, I read American Chartres: Buffalo’s Waterfront Grain Elevators by Bruce Jackson. Although one can drive along the Buffalo River and see Buffalo’s mostly defunct elevators, Bruce Jackson’s eye with his camera and his access behind locked gates provide a valuable adjunct to understanding these monuments to Buffalo’s past.  As to the title? Both the interior of the Cathedral at Chartres and the exterior of SIlo City  silently shout “look up.”

Today I finished The Best Planned City in the World, Olmsted, Vaux, and the Buffalo Park System by Francis R. Kowsky. An excellent history, with illustrations, of Olmsted and Vaux’s work in Buffalo.  I was familiar with Olmsted’s connection with Delaware Park, then “The Park” and Martin Luther King Park, then “The Parade” and the interconnecting Humboldt Parkway now lost to expressways.  But I did not know that he helped design, and fought for, every square and park in the city of Buffalo, and lead the international fight for the preservation of Niagara Falls.  Highly recommend reading to understand the design and history of Buffalo.

One more recommendation: Right Here, Right Now: The Buffalo Anthology by Jody K. Biehl (Editor), an exciting collection of history, stories, and essays by current and past residents of Buffalo.