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…
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Flipping through the channels we get over the air without cable, and I saw black & white video that looked like Buffalo’s Central Terminal. Turns out, it was!!
The opening five minutes or so of a 1963 episode of Route 66 was shot inside the New York Central Terminal, with some looks at the surrounding area as well.
Great East Side views!!
The Central Terminal part of this episode was also posted on YouTube some time ago.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Martin Luther King addressed a full house at at Kleinhans Music Hall on December 9, 1967.
This is the coverage from the Buffalo Courier-Express the following morning.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Buffalo’s decline as an industrial power had already begun, but either it was difficult to tell from within or those who did know didn’t want to admit it for fear the admission would help accelerate the decline.
As the 1960s started 55 years ago this week, The News Editorial Board looked back at the booming ’50s and looked ahead to what needed to keep that boom going into the ’60s and beyond.
Many of the changes discussed as necessary for the 1960s are just beginning to be fulfilled 50 years later.
“Challenge of the ’60s”
“The decade just ended for the Niagara Frontier, as for other urban regions, has been a period of tremendous growth and profound change.”
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
New York Telephone called it a sign of our area’s great progress in one sentence, and then in the next sentence said it’s happening everywhere around the country.
It was this week 55 years ago that Ma Bell began getting telephone users ready to ditch phone numbers like TRiangle 9820 and PArkside 1344, in favor of new versions like TA2-9820 and TF3-1344.
By the end of the 1960s, letters completely gave way to numbers in phone numbers around the country and in Buffalo.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
It doesn’t seem like 1990 is that far away to many Buffalonians — until you tell them in 1990 you could have sat at the counter of a Your Host Restaurant and ordered a meatloaf, coffee, and fries.
Then, all the sudden 1990 — only 25 years ago — seems like a lifetime ago.
The grill sergeants take charge
A CUSTOMER walks into the downtown Your Host wearing a satiny emerald Boston Celtics jacket and a hungry expression.
“Mary,” he says, “I need something to eat.”
It’s a couple minutes past noon, the start of the lunch-time rush.
“So, what will you have?” Mary Kuntz asks over hamburgers sizzling and french fries hissing.
“Meat loaf and fries,” the Celtics fan says.
“You got it,” says Mary, 58, a short-order cook for more than 30 years.
During the lunch hour at this restaurant at 767 Main St., Mary and her fellow short-order cook, Don Schroeder, take orders as well as cook them.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
It’s difficult for many of us to believe, but as of right now, parts of the 1990s were 25 years ago.
While the very beginning of the decade was filled for hope for Western New York, and seeds which were planted then are now the strongly rooted foundations of Buffalo’s resurgence, the 1990s were still a decade of growing pains. The direction, however, was usually the right one.
Outlook is upbeat after bruising 80s
“The ’80s was the great paradox,” said Common Council Majority Leader James W. Pitts. “It was a time when the city perhaps began on the road to recovery, while at the time traveling backwards.”
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Fifty-five years ago, the Phoenix Brewery, which had been on Emslie Street since the end of Prohibition, closed, with the loss of about 30 jobs.
Phoenix Beer and Ale would continue to be bottled at the Pratt Street plant of the Iroquois Brewery. Both Phoenix and Iroquois were owned by International Breweries Inc.
The closed plant was built in 1867 and was the long time home of the East Buffalo Brewing Company.
“Old Phoenix Brewery closes in transfer of operations”
By Bob Watson | October 21, 1959
“Emslie St. plant is offered for sale as Iroquois absorbs part of its staff.”
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Buffalo, NY – The Rev. Henry Orszulak grew up in the St. John Kanty parish on Buffalo’s Polish East Side in the 1960’s and was excited to get his hands on three reel-to-reel tapes from the church’s 75th anniversary year in 1967.
Despite being nearly half-a-century old, two of the three St. John Kanty tapes sounded great. The recordings of Mass and the Christmas carols actually sound as good as they did in 1967. The concert, however, didn’t fare as well. Despite trying to play the tape back on several professional and consumer model reel-to-reel machines, significant bleedthrough and ghosting have permanently ruined the tape. It makes audio that remains difficult to listen to– although I did post a portion of it here anyway. It’s still beautiful to listen to if you can fight through the backwards organ music and singing over significant parts of it.
These descriptions were taped inside of the boxes. 
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
We’re searching out the history of the chicken wing in this, the 50th anniversary year of Buffalo’s most famous eponymous bar food.
Looking under “Pizza” in the yellow pages of Buffalo’s 1969 Telephone Directory, only one restaurant — the Anchor Bar — lists “chicken wings” as a menu option in its ad. That isn’t to say that others weren’t selling wings — in fact, several listings do mention “chicken” — but the Anchor Bar was alone in hawking “chicken wings” as such.
Ten years later, in the 1979 phone book, 54 different pizza restaurants list wings as a menu option.
Though there are other versions of where wings came from, the legend goes that the modern “Buffalo chicken wing” was invented at Buffalo’s Anchor Bar in 1964. The fact that the Anchor Bar is the sole promoter of the chicken wing on the pages of the phone book four years later may bolster that claim. But not so fast, might a chicken wing conspiracy theorist say.
With that same 1969 phone book in hand, one could point out that in the “Restaurant” section, while the Anchor Bar’s ad makes mention of music and Italian specialties, there is no mention of chicken wings. When you flip a few pages forward, you find the only mention of wings in the restaurant section: a small listing for “Wings & Things,” John Young’s Jefferson Avenue restaurant, which also claims a role in creating the icon of gastro-pop culture.
Add another four years, and by 1972, the wing world has exploded in popularity to the point where News Food Editor Janice Okun offered up a discussion of wing history, preparation and recipes for homemade wings and blue cheese dressing.
Through the years, dozens of reporters have written hundreds of stories about chicken wings: summarizing the history of the wing, eating wings during Super Bowls, mailing wings to ex-pats, organizing festivals dedicated to wings.
What follows is the first in-depth Buffalo newspaper story on the chicken wing, written eight years after that night in 1964 when Teressa Bellissimo made culinary history.
“Not much to eat on chicken wing but what there is, is ‘choice’ ”
“Elegant, they’re not.
“Neat, they are certainly not.
“But delicious, they are. We’re talking about chicken wings, a popular Western New York snack food served in generous portions. Halved, cooked, spiced, heaped and dipped into tasty dressing.
“If the fad keeps growing, the little morsels may surpass King Pizza Pie in popularity. Several local pizzerias, in fact, now include chicken wings in their menus.”
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Politicians and paisanos of a past era filled Chef’s on the day in 1979 when News reporter Anthony Cardinale stopped by with a notebook to absorb some of the feeling of a landmark. Thirty-five years later, Chef’s is still going strong.
“Around the table at Chef’s”
“ ‘My restaurant’s success is in his memory,’ Lou Billittier says when he’s asked about the chef after whom his restaurant is named.
“ ‘The chef was Attillo Silvestrini, and we still use his recipes,’ Lou says. ‘He trained me when I first started working here in 1941. I was 12.’
“ ‘He had a temper, but it was a mellow temper. If you didn’t do things right, you got the spatula! I was a dishwasher, bus boy, waiter, manager, part owner. …’”
