Buffalo - Niagara

Buffalo was the quintessential 19th-century boomtown; a city that grew prodigiously from its humble origins as a frontier village to a sprawling center of manufacturing and industry, that generated immense wealth and prosperity for many of its citizens.  Its position at the western end of the Erie Canal made it the Gateway to the West  – the departure point for millions of immigrants on their way to the American heartland.

Buffalo was also one of the last stops on the Underground Railroad, a beacon for runaway slaves seeking freedom on the far side of the Niagara River.  Battles were fought here, and the city was put to the torch during the War of 1812.  

Investing in the Region’s Heritage
Fortunes were made here by the likes of a young William G. Fargo, founder of American Express and Wells Fargo.  President William McKinley was assassinated here, at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, took the oath of office at the Wilcox Mansion, now a National Historic Site.  What would become great American industries – automobile and aerospace – had their origins in Buffalo.

The men and women who came of age during Buffalo’s heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were people of vision, and they put their wealth to work on behalf of this growing city, bringing the best and brightest of the era – Frank Lloyd Wright, Frederick Law Olmsted, H.H. Richardson, Louis Sullivan – to Buffalo to build its parks, design its buildings and shape its emerging contours.  The fortunes that were generated by the shipping, steel, auto and milling industries helped to fashion and furnish the emerging city – a city that by 1900 was the eighth largest in the United States.

Today, a new generation is restoring Buffalo’s turn-of-the-century legacy.  Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks and parkways are being reinvigorated by a forward-thinking conservancy.  A $40 million dollar reconstruction and restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sprawling Darwin D. Martin House complex is nearing completion.  Work is also underway on the restoration of Wright’s Graycliff Estate, located on a 70-foot cliff overlooking Lake Erie in nearby Derby, as well as the National Historic Landmark Roycroft campus in East Aurora, a center of the American Arts and Crafts movement.

Other investments in the region’s heritage include the Erie Canal Harbor on the city’s waterfront.  It was here that Buffalo first bloomed as a city of significance and helped shape the future of a nation.  The project includes a recreation of the original central wharf and surrounding cobblestone streets, as well as interpretive exhibits intended to bring the site’s history to life.

Cultural Attractions
Elsewhere in downtown Buffalo, work is proceeding on the development of the Michigan Avenue Heritage Corridor, a new tourism destination that will highlight the city’s role as a pivotal stop on the Underground Railroad, and later as a major center in the civil rights movement.  The venerable Colored Musicians Club remains a gathering spot for the city’s jazz musicians, much as it has since the days when touring musicians, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, graced its stage.

Shea’s Performing Arts Center is another notable cultural attraction.  This c. 1926 theater is a baroque masterpiece, designed by the men now regarded as the masters of movie palace architecture --  C.W. and George Rapp – complete with an interior design from the studio of Louis Comfort Tiffany.  In addition, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which dates from 1862, houses a collection of modern and contemporary art that is among the best in the world.

Across the street, the Burchfield-Penney Art Center, devoted to the work of the great American watercolorist, Charles Burchfield, has constructed a new home, the first museum built in Buffalo in 100 years.  At the Buffalo Zoo, the third-oldest zoo in the United States, two state-of-the-art aquatic habitats have recently opened in addition to an 18,000-square-foot South American Rainforest exhibit.

Not to be overlooked in any visit to Buffalo is nearby Niagara Falls.  Niagara Falls State Park, the oldest such park in the United States, allows visitors access to world-class attractions, such as the Maid of the Mist and the Cave of the Winds, as well as the opportunity to experience the more natural side of the falls at the Three Sisters Islands.

All of this is nestled in a region that is home to the Erie Canalway National Heritage Area, the Niagara Falls National Heritage Area and the Seaway Trail, New York state’s National Scenic Byway.