Buffalo in the 50s: 31,000 housing units added; 5,000 more expected this year

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The City of Buffalo, in particular, faced a housing crisis during World War II when tens of thousands of people came to the city to populate the war production efforts in what was then one of the nation’s top manufacturing cities.

From 1940 to 1950, Buffalo and the nearby suburbs gained 68,000 residents and saw 31,000 new units of housing built.  The analysis of these numbers and others make for an interesting snapshot in Buffalo’s history and show what city fathers were looking at as they built infrastructures to accommodate the 2 million Buffalonians expected to come by 1980.

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Steve Cichon

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.