Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News.
He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries, and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Buffalo’s wealthiest and most philanthropic families through most of the 20th century were in change of Buffalo’s banks. Each was known for its pop-culture contributions to Buffalo as well.
The grandfather of the founder of the Sabres, Seymour Knox Sr., was credited with building Marine (later Marine Midland) Bank into a modern giant. It was Seymour Knox II’s love of art and patronage that saved the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, know now, of course, as the Albright-Knox.
The Rand and Diebold families made their wealth in banking — but they were also well known in the broadcasting world.
It’s an old, probably apocryphal story that the call letters of Buffalo’s first successful commercial radio station — WGR — were selected in homage to George Rand, an early financier of the station. It’s more likely that the call letters were randomly assigned and the Rand reference was a happy coincidence.
The Diebolds were influential in early television in Buffalo, helping to bring the financial backing of Western Savings Bank to a handful of stations in the 1950s.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Ellsworth Statler came to Buffalo in 1896 to open a restaurant in the world’s largest office building, the Ellicott Square Building. His first hotel was temporary — it was built one block from the Pan-American Exposition.
His second hotel was built in 1908, and a photo of it is shown with the article. The building was still standing in 1980 at the corner of Washington and Swan streets, but it was torn down to make way for Coca-Cola Field.
Of course, the most famous of his hotels in Buffalo, the grand Statler on Niagara Square, was built in 1923. This article deals with the ups and downs of this last address.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Easily the forerunner of indoor mall shopping in Western New York, the Thruway Plaza opened in 1952, a decade before Buffalo’s first covered mall, the Bouvelard Mall, opened its doors.
Thruway Plaza was enclosed to become Thruway Mall in 1974, but the shopping center fell on hard times when it began losing shoppers and tenants to the Walden Galleria Mall, only a mile away, starting in 1989.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries, and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Cabs for hire — then drawn by horses — were the most important form of transportation in early Buffalo. Since then, it’s been an interesting ride for the taxi industry in Buffalo.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries, and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
In 1980, many of the big names in Buffalo banking — Marine Midland, M&T, Western, Buffalo Savings, and Liberty — all would have been familiar to Buffalonians 100 years before. Thirty-five years later, only M&T remains.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Probably because it was fun to say, Buffalonians who were around remember well the Big E, even if they don’t remember Erie County Savings Bank. Just like Buffalo Savings Bank, which became Goldome in the ’80s, the Big E started buying up other banks around the country and changed its name to Empire of America.
Also like Buffalo Savings Bank, Empire was bought out and out of business by 1990 as savings and loan institutions around the country faltered.
By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo
When we were growing up, my mom was generally pretty steady and even keeled. Under almost every circumstance, she was very difficult to rile.
Unless you touched her scissors.
Sadly, in retrospect, it was a line we crossed regularly with laughter and impunity– we the other heartless bastards of her family.
Poor mom had very little to herself. By the time she graduated grammar school, she had six brothers and sisters. She married at 20 and had three kids by 26.
In all that time, as far as I can tell, the only gosh-darned thing she ever wanted for herself were those scissors.
Now we had scissors all over the house, at least half-a-dozen of those severe heavy steel ones with black handles.
The problem was that each of these pairs of scissors– with the gloss black painted handles– had issues. There wasn’t a perfect pair among them.
Some were dull, some had a loose pivot screw, some had tips broken off. None could zip quickly up wrapping paper like Mom’s could.
In our house, it seemed the best course of action for any cutting need was to rip out a piece of mom’s heart– and rip off her scissors.
These babies were beautiful.
The fact that I could find a photo of this exact obscure Fay’s Drugs glass measuring cup online means that almost everything is on the internet.
Not just merely scissors, these were shears– orange handled shears– sticking out among the pens, pencils, and Emory boards in a Fay’s Drugs measuring cup on mom’s nightstand.
Of course, mom was well within her rights to be so protective.
We were like wild Neanderthals, just barely able to understand the proper use of a crude axe, and this pair of scissors was the precision tool of a seamstress, meant to be used with delicate cloth and thread.
While I’m still not convinced, that as Mom said, “Cutting paper with them will ruin them!”– I do know that something terrible happened to every other pair of scissors in the house to render them somehow useless, and she had every right to be concerned about the future of her scissors in our hands.
For one, my dad had no handyman sense, and it would have been completely plausible that he could have ruined these scissors trying to fix the lawnmower or a leaky drain with them.
Us kids inherited our ol’man’s lack of differentiation of tools, and any of us might have used the scissors to carve a point on a stick or to cut open a pop can like the guy on the Ginzu commercials.
Of course, we’d laugh and laugh when mom would lose her mind over HER scissors… but it’s understandable now, for sure.
Especially when my wife grabs for the kitchen shears out of the knife block to clip coupons.
Even when I hold my tongue, my blood pressure still rises because that’s what we bought those dollar store scissors for– clipping coupons.
It’s pretty much an incontrovertible fact that kitchen shears– meant for food prep stuff– are ruined by coupon clipping.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Those who love books, love bookstores. Generations of Buffalonians who loved both loved Ulbrich’s, one of Buffalo’s most prominent stationers and booksellers from the time Otto Ulbrich opened on Main Street in 1871.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Discount department stores were still looked at as an outgrowth of five-and-dime stores like Woolworth’s in 1980.
This break down of discount stores in Buffalo talks about Two Guys, Twin Fair, King’s, Century Housewares, Brand Names and the new kid on the block Hills — which had just opened four area stores in 1979.
The photo is of the checkout lanes at the Seneca Street Twin Fair location. The building at the city line was just demolished earlier this year.
Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.
In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.
Reporter Stephanie Christopher’s look back at the families who put food on the shelves of area grocery stores for generations — before founding Buffalo’s first supermarkets — offers a glimpse at businesses that have all been bought and sold out of local control over the last 35 years.
The one standout is Tops Markets, which was sold to the Dutch firm Ahold in 1991, only to be sold back to local owners in 2006.
