Category: Buffalo Neighborhoods

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

North and South Buffalo. The East and West Sides. But how many neighborhoods can you name that don’t fit any of those descriptions?

From the biggest geographical sections, to the dozens of micro-neighborhoods and hundreds of great intersections, each little bit of Buffalo has it’s own unique story, and many of those stories are right here.

Scroll to read more about Buffalo’s Neighborhoods or search for something specific…

Buffalo in the 1890s: Polish and Italian freight workers clash

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Today, it’s one of Buffalo’s newest waterfront spaces—RiverFest Park– nestled between Ohio Street and the Buffalo River, just across the water from Buffalo RiverWorks and the Labatt grain silos.

The Buffalo Evening News, May 26, 1899

At the tail end of the 19th century, Buffalo’s waterfront was rough and tumble. On this day in particular, it was the place where two immigrant groups clashed and “a race riot looked imminent.”

The unionized mostly Polish freight handlers at the New York Central Freight House on Ohio Street had joined the unionized mostly Irish grain shovelers in striking for better working conditions and in protest of contract abuses.

When the dock-working Poles came back to work, many were displeased to be working alongside mostly Italian non-union men. Management promised to dismiss the Italians, but when 150 showed up ready for work the next day, “within five minutes, a good sized riot was in progress.”

How the fight started seemed to be in question—The News’ account laid the blame at some of the 200 Poles who began accosting the Italians and calling them scabs. The Courier said the Italians may have started it when one of them threw an old tomato can into the group of Poles.

“Knives and revolvers were flourished,” reported The News, “and fists were freely used.”

Witnesses heard as many as 25 gunshots—one Polish man was shot in the back. An Italian man was slashed in the face. Five were arrested and charged with rioting.

Torn-Down Tuesday: Before the Hampton Inn at Delaware & Chippewa

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The initial planning of the Hampton Inn at Delaware and Chippewa was met with some degree of skepticism in the years before it opened in 2001.

“We’re talking about a development that would have an impact on an entire downtown block,” said Mayor Anthony Masiello before later endorsing the plan which also called for the demolition by implosion of the former Ford Hotel to make room for Hampton parking.

It wasn’t the first time that city block had undergone a transformation.

The Hampton Inn was built inside the structure of the Willis K. Jackson Building—a six-story Bley & Lyman fireproof structure first opened for occupancy in April 1923.

Buffalo Stories archives

The concrete, steel and brick building with ornamental terracotta was designed by the same firm that created the plans for the downtown Hens & Kelly store and the Saturn Club.

The erection of the Jackson Building saw the demolition of one of Buffalo’s classic, typical looking structures of an earlier era.

This building stood on the corner for the second half of the 19th century. The Ford-Meadows home was torn down in 1922.

Happy (716) Day 2016!

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – It’s July 16th– aka 7/16– aka 716 day here in the 716 area code of Buffalo, New York.

Really, all that means is it’s just another great day to be a Buffalonian!

Buffalo in the ’80s: Talking Proud!

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

At the time, M&T President Andrew Craig called it “the most extensive and far reaching effort in the history of Buffalo aimed at upgrading and improving Buffalo’s image.”

Thirty-four years later, any Buffalonian over the age of 40 still instantly recognizes the face and stance of actress Terry Licata (now Licata-Braunstein), who proudly led the “Talking Proud” march in an extensive, long-running TV promo campaign. (Buffalo News archives)

Even when it was new– and especially now, to the outsider — the “We’re Talking Proud” jingle and TV spot were at best lampoonish and cheesy. For Buffalonians, however, the song is a communally understood representation of our complex feelings about our hometown.

Most of us have an unusually fierce love and loyalty for Western New York, even for what outsiders might perceive as bruises and warts. We’re proud of our snow and our blue collars, but protective against people who might not understand or who understand but hold their noses aloft at our “quaintness.”

Buffalo Stories archives

The whole campaign was created to help us coalesce those feelings as a community. Surveys showed people wanted to stay in Buffalo, and loved the fact that it was relatively cheap to live well here. People loved the number of restaurants, the abundance of cultural and pro sports events, running the gamut of taste and price.

Bills and Sabres fans were talking proud in the early ’80s. (Buffalo Stories archives)

But in 1982, Buffalo’s unemployment numbers hit 15.3 percent, in the same year that Bethlehem Steel announced the shuttering of what was once the world’s largest steel manufacturing facility, and once the home of more than 20,000 jobs.

“The problem is (the people of Buffalo) don’t know too many facts about why they’re proud, and they’re sort of backward about standing up for their city,” campaign chairman Robert J. Donough told the Associated Press three months after the launch.

But even trying to capture the spirit of the campaign, the AP writer had to report some, cold hard facts. “With its numerous dingy buildings and empty storefronts, the downtown area remains a depressing shock to the first-time visitor.”

Donough told a different group, “We found we had to give (Buffalonians) something to talk about. So, at this point, we began to develop the Talking Proud campaign.”

Bells Markets became a clearing house for many “Talking Proud” logo items. (Buffalo Stories archives)

At the high point, the Talking Proud logo was licensed to 85 firms producing 135 products, from lollipops to an $11,000 Buick Regal furnished as a rolling testament to pride in Buffalo.

The television ads were romp and pomp, and happy and high-flying, but the print ads, featuring small groups of Buffalonians, were a bit edgier.

“We’ve got a spirit and we’re talking proud…. We’re fed up with all the insults, all the jokes about our city. We Buffalonians have had it right up to here. We’ve got one of the best communities in the world.

“We’re proud of Buffalo. We’re not going bankrupt. We’re not having riots. And we’re not going to take your abuse any longer. So back off, America. If you want to poke fun, poke it somewhere else. We’re Buffalo. We’ve got a spirit. And we’re talking proud.”

Western New Yorkers were keenly aware of the problems at home—and for quite some time had been tired of hearing about those problems from outsiders.

It started as early as 1969, with a scathing piece as much about Buffalo as the Bills in Sports Illustrated. San Francisco sports writer Glenn Dickey made a city full of enemies for life as he was quoted calling Buffalo the “armpit of the East.”

After days and weeks of Buffalo Blizzard aftermath footage dominating national newscasts in 1977, Johnny Carson, whose Johnny Carson-brand suits were manufactured here by M. Wile, made Buffalo’s blizzard cleanup a longstanding punch line.

Even Howard Cosell, often derided for his sports analysis, specifically inspired the ire of Western New York with a jibe insinuating that Buffalo was a lesser “clone of Cleveland” on a Monday Night Football broadcast.

One Buffalo jab blew a bit out of proportion, but wound up with kumbaya.

In 1981, the Chinese owner of the Hilton, Clement Chen, was planning to build a hotel for Americans in Beijing, so he brought a delegation of Chinese chefs to train in American cuisine at his Buffalo hotel. CBS Newsman Morley Safer, who found the notion of Chinese chefs training in Buffalo “marvelously incongruous,” wrote a tongue-in-cheek commentary that was likely funny to most of America, but not to Buffalo—where jokes about Love Canal and the lake being dirty have never played well. Safer spoke of “the more than aromatic shores of Lake Erie” and said that Buffalo’s “greasy and impenetrable” “chemical cuisine” would result in “international ill-will.”

Thousands of letters from Buffalo later, CBS president Gene Jankowski, a Buffalo native, “urged” (strong-armed?) Safer into accepting the invitation of the Chamber of Commerce to visit Buffalo.”My impression of this city has certainly changed,” the newsman said as he toured. “I wrote in my commentary about the mythology and now I’ve seen reality. You’ve just won a fan.”

Buffalo Community Development Commissioner Larry Quinn shows Morley Safer around downtown. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Later that morning, he told a throng outside One M&T Plaza, “This whole thing started in fun and I was determined not to apologize. But after one of the most gracious and spectacular mornings of my life, I must say I am sorry.”

“Talking Proud” was great for Buffalonians and showed outsiders that we cared. But in national talk about the juggernaut, more people echoed the negative notions the campaign was meant to dispel.

US News and World Report said the campaign was conceived to “disprove outsiders’ cruel jests picturing Buffalo as an urban desert.” TV Guide said the bright music and happy marching was “in contrast to Buffalo’s coldly forbidding image.”

Again, the print ads were far more succinct than the happy jingle.

“Give it to ’em, Buffalo. We’ve got an earful to tell America about living here.

“For starters medical care, food prices and home costs are among the lowest anywhere. So are our crime rates. Our schools are some of the best. Plus we get a gentle prevailing wind off our lake that gives our city four distinctive weather seasons and some of the best pollution-free air around.

“Sure, some of us moved out of Buffalo. We tried other cities like Chicago, San Diego, New York, Houston and Memphis.

“Funny thing, America, a lot of us moved back. We missed the short commuting times to work. And the cheap parking rates. We missed Buffalo’s unique nightlife. We missed quiet places like Delaware Park, the Marina. We missed neighborhoods that pull together, stay together and are being restored and renewed together.

“In short, America, we think the quality of life around here is better than a lot of places you offer.

“So we’re speaking our piece. Because we’re Buffalo. We’ve got a spirit. And we’re talking proud.”

There were many people who can take credit for giving life to the “Talking Proud” campaign.

Fred Dentinger, the great Buffalo philanthropist, was chairman of the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce when he championed the notion of defending Buffalo against naysayers, and even going on the offensive if necessary. A few years later, Dave Smith was in charge at the Chamber, and joined by PR man Pat Donlon, laid the ground work for “Talking Proud.”

They hired Alden Schutte, the great ad man and artist, who oversaw the creation of every facet of the campaign.

Then there’s the actual voice we can easily hear in our minds without trying too hard. Teresa Giles, still hailed as one of Indiana’s premier session singers, was described as a “27-year old farm girl” when credited with singing the original track, recorded at Wolftrack Studios in Indianapolis.

The personification of Talking Proud, however, had to be the exuberant young actress selected to star in the TV spots.

Terry Licata-Braunstein has been seen in films like “Raging Bull” and “Hide in Plain Sight,” and on the small screen in “Law & Order.”

Terry Licata grew up on the West Side, and had tried out for a role in an AM&A’s commercial. That didn’t work out, but producer Schutte remembered her, and the rest is history.

More on “the high-stepping, diminutive lady in the red jumpsuit leading a throng of chest-thumping Buffalonians” from News Reporter Harold McNeil: ‘Talking Proud’ cheerleader still struts her stuff on screen

There’s also Joe Cribbs, Chuck Knox, Joe Ferguson, and the early ’80s Bills. When the Bills beat the defending Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers and the “Talking Proud” song blared from the Rich Stadium sound system, 80,000 people danced and sang. And we haven’t stopped showing that “Buffalo’s got a spirit” ever since… talking proud, talking proud.

What it looked like Wednesday: Lines at the grocery during World War II rationing, 1943

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The Office of Price Administration was actually established several months before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as the country prepared for the possibility of war.

Weeks after the declaration of war, price controls and rationing were implemented on all manner of consumer goods except agricultural products.

Ben Dykstra, butcher and grocer at the corner of Main and Merrimac in University Heights, shows off the full March, 1943 ration of canned goods for a family of four.

Buffalo News archives

Families had to register for ration books, as Mrs. EW England was doing at School 16 on Delaware and Hodge in 1943.

Women jammed markets when they knew they could get good meat. Such was the case at Neber & McGill Butchers on William Street in 1943.

Additional ration points could be earned by turning in food waste, like grease, for the war effort. Mrs. Robert Bond of Hampshire Street collected four cents and two brown ration points for turning in a pound of rendered kitchen fat to Anthony Scime, of Scime Brothers Grocery, at Hampshire and 19th on the West Side.

Even after the war, shortages continued. This is the scene at the Mohican Market on Main Street near Fillmore in 1946, on a day when butter was available.

The News called it “a mob scene” inside, where Office of Price Administration rules dropped the price to 53 cents. Some markets, confused by the change in rules, were selling for 64 cents.

The OPA was dissolved and price controls ended in 1947.

A generational satisfaction in the new Buffalo

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – Just driving where the roads took me, I wound up in the First Ward today, driving down the stunning new Ohio Street and looking across the dirt and weeds to the Chicago Street lot which was home to long gone ancestors.

My 3rd great grandfather, Miles Norton, was an Irish immigrant grain worker who died in the family flat over 64 Chicago Street when he was 45 years old in 1883.

The address is a shaggy looking vacant lot right now, but over looks all that is new and exciting in Buffalo.

As Miles and his big Irish family lived a pretty impoverished Old First Ward existence, it’s easy to imagine them looking out their back window at the stinking and dirty Buffalo River… And thinking of it as their lifeline and livelihood, as the means for a life better than the one left behind on the old sod of Eire.

In 1883, living above 64 Chicago Street was pretty much the end of the line. It was likely better than what was left in the old country, but the worst of Buffalo. Filth and poverty and hunger.

An 1893 Buffalo Courier story calls 64 Chicago a tenement.

For the last half century, the view from that spot has showcased rotting industry and wasted waterfront… And was a view many could point to as ground zero for hopelessness and the slow death of Buffalo.

I wish ol’Miles could see that view now… And understand the newness and feeling of hearts-overflowing in the rebirth of the grounds which are forever stained with the sweat and blood of him and so many hundreds of thousands like him through the decades.

Looking at empty Chicago Street lot where Miles Norton's home once stood, and the view from the water just across Ohio Street. — Looking at empty Chicago Street lot where Miles Norton’s home once stood, and the view from the water just across Ohio Street.

As I stood in those weeds today at the corner of Chicago and Mackinaw, my soul glowed with happiness for my ancestors– that their toil won’t be forgotten and my descendants– that they will be able to live in and enjoy a rejuvenated and wonderful Buffalo.

Our future is built on our past. Our future honors our past.

Torn-Down Tuesday: The old City Hospital at the ECMC site

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The current Erie County Medical Center building is an imposing concrete structure and an East Buffalo landmark.

Buffalo News archives

But the hospital on Grider Street wasn’t always a hulking gray monolith. Buffalo City Hospital opened in 1918, and the peaceful gardens surrounding it were described in 1934 as a fresh air garden, with benefits and recuperative powers for patients.

In 1939, Buffalo City became Meyer Memorial. Among the $150,000 in improvements to the hospital in 1962 were two new delivery rooms, being shown off here by nurses Lois Newton and Frances Thorp.

The hospital’s name changed to Erie County Medical Center with the opening of the current building in 1978.

The Buffalo You Should Know: WNY amusement parks through the decades

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Just what counts as an amusement park has been determined on a sliding scale since the phrase was first recorded in the 1890s.

Crystal Beach, 1989. (Buffalo News archives)

Tell an iPad kid of today that he’s going to an amusement park, and visions of mega-coasters and waterparks at Darien Lake or Disney World will dance in his head.

It’s a far cry from when Buffalonians of not-so-long-ago were contented with the tilt-a-whirl and a merry-go-round permanently set up in some department store parking lot.

For a century, Buffalo’s gold standard for amusement parks — no matter how that term was defined — was Crystal Beach. When it was founded in 1888, Crystal Beach was celebrated for the healing powers of its natural sand and crystal-clear waters. Steamboat excursions from Buffalo, first on the Puritan and the Pearl and later on the Americana and Canadiana, brought visitors to Lake Erie’s Canadian shores, but also to several similar resorts along the shores of Western New York.

Elmwood Beach Grand Island

In 1897, Grand Island’s Elmwood Beach was promoted as the only temperance — that is, alcohol-free — park and beach on the American side of the international border. It was opened in 1894 by the White Line lake steamer company, to provide its passengers with a destination it called “The Island Paradise of Buffalo.” It was operated by Harvey Ferren, owner of the Court Street Theatre downtown.

It was built as “a safe place for bathing” for women and children, with hard white-sand beaches. Special park police made sure that there was no “objectionable swim attire” at this summer resort that “was on a scale previously unknown in the area.” The fact that no liquor was sold there made it a popular destination for church groups, which boarded the boat to the resort at the foot of Ferry Street.

Elmwood Beach was one of a handful of such resorts that popped up on Grand Island. Eldorado Beach was another.

New “high-class amusements and novelties” were unveiled for the 1899 season, but by 1910, the place had been abandoned. The parcel eventually became part of Beaver Island State Park, unveiled in 1939.

West Seneca’s Lein’s Park, Cheektowaga’s Bellvue Park, Fillmore Avenue’s Teutonia Park

These rustic, outdoorsy amusement areas were a drive out to the country in their day, but the land they were once located upon has long since been developed. The areas were used most by Buffalo’s growing German immigrant population.

Lein’s Park was built over the course of nearly a decade by Gardenville’s Henry Lein, just south of Cazenovia Creek and what is now Southgate Plaza on Union Road, starting in 1895.

Home to a bear pit, bowling alley and dance hall, the park closed up at some point after Lein — who served as West Seneca town supervisor — was found guilty of graft and sent to prison in Auburn in 1913. He was later pardoned by the governor and re-elected supervisor.

Buffalo’s German-Americans were clearly the target clientele for Fillmore Avenue’s Teutonia Park, “the family resort of the East Side” of the 1880s and 1890s.

While catering to Germans, the grounds one block north of Martin Luther King Jr. (then Parade) Park were owned by Baptist Kahabka, “one of Buffalo’s leading Polish citizens.” The park was one of Buffalo’s leading sports and conventions grounds, with boxing matches and picnics attracting crowds of up to 10,000 people somewhat regularly.

In 1921, the city cleared the land where the park once stood, and built East High School on the easternmost part of the plot.

Bellevue Park sprang up along Cayuga Creek at the last stop of a trolley line from Buffalo. The Bellevue Hotel on Como Park Boulevard was once a part of the sprawling 30-acre park, which was open until around the turn of the century.

Woodlawn Beach

Touted as “The American resort for Americans,” Woodlawn Beach tried to take on Crystal Beach directly, hoping to scoop up some of the thousands who arrived at Buffalo’s Central Wharf to get on ships bound for Canada.

Buffalo Stories archives

The steamer Corona, and later the steamer Puritan, took passengers to Woodlawn Beach four times daily from Buffalo. The grounds opened in 1892 with a toboggan slide and “ice-cream” as main attractions. As early as 1894, ads also bragged about the park’s being “illuminated with electricity.”

In 1920, it was electricity that was bringing Buffalonians to Woodlawn in streetcars on what was billed as “only a seven-minute ride” from downtown. Two years later, Bethlehem Steel bought up some of the property for use as a slag dump, but the old roller coaster and amusements stayed in place in various states of operation through the Great Depression.

The evolution of many of these Victorian health retreats and picnic grounds into the more modern amusement park concept was pushed along by one of the great marvels of Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition: “A Trip to the Moon.”

Located on the Midway on near what is Amherst Street today, “A Trip to the Moon” offered 60 passengers at once the most technologically advanced amusement of its time. A ride in a “spaceship” offered a simulated tour of the moon.

The ride caught the fancy of tens of thousands of visitors to Buffalo and at least that many Buffalonians. That was no doubt behind the idea in naming the features of Fairyland Park at Jefferson at Ferry after the Pan-Am’s big attractions. In 1910, “the Mecca of pleasure-seekers” was promoting its midway and Temple of Music — both with names taken directly from the Pan-Am. But other budget attractions inspired by the world-class event included Mysterious Asia, Cave of the Winds, White Horse Tavern, Southern Plantation, Japanese Rolling Balls, Minerva the Mystic and Reed’s Big Congress of Novelties.

“Luna Park was built just after the Pan-American Exposition and was the nearest thing to Coney Island in the pleasure line that Buffalo had to offer,” reported the Buffalo Courier in 1909 after the city’s biggest-ever amusement park burned to the ground at the corner of Main and Jefferson.

Click for larger view. Buffalo Stories archives

Renamed Carnival Court, the old Luna Park cost more than $250,000 to rebuild. Five cents admission gained you access to rides like Shoot the Chutes, the L. A. Thompson Mountain Scenic Railway, Auto-whirl, Witching Water Ways, Galloping-Horse Carousel, Human Roulette Wheel and Ocean Waves.

Buffalo News archives

The site was razed to make way for a Sears Roebuck store and parking ramp in 1929. Both of those former Sears structures are now part of the Canisius College campus.

Built in Western New York

A Western New York company gave rise to many smaller amusement parks around the country in the years following World War II.

When demand for the handcrafted carousels that had made the company famous since 1880 started to wane, North Tonawanda’s Allan Herschell Co. began making smaller amusement rides it marketed as attractions to small and large venues alike.

Opened originally in the 1920s as a dance pavilion, Lalle’s at Lake Bay, Angola, steadily added amusement rides and booths through the 1940s and 1950s. New amusements for 1947 included the miniature zeppelin, auto and railroad rides, the Dodge-Em, the Ocean Wave and the Chair Plane.

These smaller amusements were used to entice parents to bring their children — and maybe do some additional shopping — in several places around Western New York. Buffalo’s first suburban mega-shopping center, the Thruway Plaza, opened in 1952 with a handful of rides in its Kiddie Ranch.

Just up Walden Avenue, on the corner of Dick Road, stood Twin Fair Kiddieland in the parking lot of the department store.

In Niagara County, Page’s Kiddyland at Packard and Military first stood to help draw customers to the Simon-Gulf gas station and then the Whistle Pig restaurant.

One of Western New York’s smallest-yet-long-lasting amusement attractions was Dealing’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard near Ellicott Creek Park.

Buffalo Stories archives

The Dealing family first built an elaborately carved carousel on their Niagara Falls Boulevard farm in 1929. After returning from World War II, Earl Dealing added about a half-dozen rides to the one put up by his father. He ran Dealing’s Amusement Park until 1980.

Nestled off Main Street in the Village of Williamsville, Harry Altman’s Glen Park Casino is remembered for high-quality musical and Hollywood entertainment and was a regular stop for acts as varied as Sammy Davis Jr. and the Three Stooges. Those too young to remember the music just might remember the rides.

Up to 6,000 people or more would fill the tiny park on holidays in the 1960s. The Glen Park Casino, renamed Inferno, burned down in a $300,000 blaze in 1968. The area was developed into a park in 1975.

Glen Park. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Western New York children of the 1970s might remember Fun-N-Games Park just off the Youngmann in Tonawanda.

Buffalo Stories archives

Another instance of amusement rides in a Twin Fair parking lot, the park’s most memorable feature might have been the unconnected roadside attraction in front of it—the whale car wash.

Buffalo News archives

The larger parks like Crystal Beach, Fantasy Island and Darien Lake were built and promoted as regional destinations, and likely remembered by almost anyone who grew up in Western New York, but these smaller parks are just as memorable in our own experiences or the stories or our parents and grandparents of days gone by.

Fantasy Island, 1960s. (Buffalo News archives)

Buffalo in the ’70s: Stan Makowski, Buffalo’s guy-next-door mayor

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Stan Makowski was a pretty good bowler, and even as mayor played in tournaments for Tippie’s Social & Athletic Club.

Buffalo News archives

At one time or another during his 10 years at Allied Mills, he lost the tip of an index finger in an accident. Even as mayor, when the guys were playing softball and there were two outs on the board, someone would inevitably ask, waiting for him to show off the wound.

“Hey Mack (which is what everyone around The Valley called Makowski, even as mayor) how many outs? One-and-a-half?”

Among the chorus of laughter every time was Makowski’s own laugh.

Buffalo News archives

A shop steward at Grain Millers Local 110, even as mayor (and until the day he died), he proudly carried his membership card in his wallet. He earned the card unloading hundred-pound sacks in the railyard at the grain mill. Mrs. Makowski used to sew an extra layer or two into the shoulders of his flannel shirts, because the friction of the burlap sacks flying next to his neck would burn holes down to the skin.

“I’m not much of a speaker, but I am a worker,” Makowski said upon becoming mayor.

With Mrs. and Mayor Sedita. Buffalo News archives

He served three years in the Army during World War II, including eight months in Iwo Jima.

So much about Stanley Makowski sounds like it could be ripped from the biography of just about any Buffalo son of Polish immigrants, member of “The Greatest Generation,” a man who never lived more than a block away from the house where he was born.

Buffalo News archives

He was humble and mostly quiet — not prone to extremes and rarely yelled or swore. Everyone knew he’d been around, that he’d been in a fight or two, that he’d seen some things in the Army. People knew he was tough enough, and he didn’t feel the need to constantly tell people.

Officially opening city pools at Schiller Park, 1973. Buffalo News archives

He was happy to be part of the team, part of the group. He didn’t need to be noticed. Not the kind of guy who filled up a room when he walked in.

He remembered his friends. He remembered where he came from.

Buffalo News archives

He was that same guy as mayor.

Those triple-shouldered shirts had long gone to the rag man, but when Mayor Stanley Makowski was home on the weekends — every weekend, he’d pull on the same pair of gray flannel work pants he wore when he was unloading grain off boxcars. Like every other man in the neighborhood, the weekend was the time to re-putty the window or paint the fence.

Buffalo News archives

People he knew his whole life might call him “Mayor,” but just as many still called him Mack. That was true especially at neighborhood places like Ike’s on Van Rensselaer, where plenty of guys in The Valley would walk to get their hair cut. Next door to Ike’s was Tippie’s — where most of those guys, Mack included, would first show off their new haircuts and then catch up with the boys over a beer or two.

He was just a neighborhood guy. It might have been that the thing he liked most about being mayor is being able to help regular folks and make City Hall work for them.

Buffalo News archives

By the time Makowski had become mayor in 1974, the economic and psychological slide that city leaders had been white-washing for decades were becoming difficult to slough off. Buffalo’s industrial decline seemed to burst out of control.

His first budget as mayor called for belt-tightening that translated into more than 350 jobs cut from City Hall. There was a very tangible impact on those getting pink slips, but there was an emotional impact on Buffalonians across the board.

If anyone saw where Buffalo was heading early on, and worked to avoid it, it was Makowski. His career in elected office began in 1955 when he challenged the endorsed Democrat for a seat on the Erie County Board of Supervisor s— the forerunner of today’s county legislature. He won by four votes with calls for efficiency in government.

Buffalo News archives

His earliest fights in government — in 1956 — were trying to convince the city and suburbs to begin implementing baby steps towards a far more efficient metropolitan-style government.

“We must think in terms of a metropolitan region when we are making future plans for the county,” Makowski said when speaking of roads, sewers and water. Before the end of the 1950s, he’d become Buffalo’s youngest Councilman.

From left: Erie County Democratic Chairman Joe Crangle, Erie County Sheriff Michael Amico, Makowski, County Comptroller (later Congressman) Henry Nowak and Mayor Frank Sedita. (Buffalo News archives)

In 1957, his calls for a countywide, unified effort in snow removal fell on deaf ears. Twenty years later, Makowski was mayor during one of the seminal moments in Buffalo’s history — The Blizzard of ’77.

Makowski with Governor Carey after the Blizzard of ’77. Buffalo News archives

A News poll at the time showed that a majority of Western New Yorkers thought Makowski did at least a fair job in handling the unprecedented natural disaster, but others said he was indecisive.

Particularly since it was shortly after the storm he decided not to seek re-election, Makowski’s name gets tossed around like one of those hundred-pound sacks of grain as somehow “responsible” for the unpredicted, unparalleled onslaught of Mother Nature and the negative attention Buffalo received afterwards.

It seems to be human nature to need a culprit, or to boil history down to a sentence or a simple idea, but it bothers most of those who were closest to him to hear Makowski being “blamed for the blizzard,” mostly because there were few Western New Yorkers who took the inability to get people the help they needed more personally than Makowski.

Makowski won’t seek re-election. 1977. Buffalo News archives

The blizzard hurt him personally. He struggled with the fact that there was no more he could do. Fire engines were frozen and even the National Guard could only work in half-hour shifts in the cold, but that people were suffering and he couldn’t end it affected him deeply. He openly admitted he was probably a little too sensitive to criticism and any inability to meet the needs of the people.

It weighed on him to the point where he was ready to walk away from City Hall, and go back full time to that simpler life he never really left in the first place.

Buffalo News archives

A final straw might have been a picket line set up outside a fundraiser.

As a union man himself, Makowski never begrudged any worker the right to picket — but as a family man, wanted to protect his small children from any abuse that might be sent his way. When the mayor, his wife, and their eight kids entered the Statler by a side door, several protestors saw it — and lobbed some choice words at the mayor in ear shot of the smallest of the brood.

Mayor Makowski with his two youngest children at a Hotel Statler fundraiser, 1977. Buffalo News archives

At the end of his time as mayor, a News editorial said Makowski had “been hurt by his own nice guy” image, but it wasn’t an image. It was the man, in City Hall, in the grain mill, at Tippie’s Social Club, in the home he lived in when he died, which was next door to the home in which he was born.

What it looked like Wednesday: Tonawanda’s Young Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Why this photo was taken in the first place is a mystery. Even exactly when it was taken is unknown. Looking at it today, probably 35 years after the shutter snapped, shows plenty of little differences between the Young Street of the ’70s and the Young Street of today.

Buffalo News archives

Just to be clear, that’s the corner of a Fotomat in a Twin Fair parking lot. Off in the distance, the beloved and warmly remembered whale car wash. All three of these landmark features were gone by the mid-’80s.