Buffalo in the ’90s: Channel 2 anchors Laurie Lisowski and Rich Kellman

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Through the 1980s and ’90s, there were dozens of featured news anchors on Channel 2, but two of the most popular remain Rich Kellman and Laurie Lisowski. They were paired on the anchor desk at 5 p.m. in 1990.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

While Channel 2 was nearly wall-to-wall in the third-place news basement during Rich Kellman’s 32 years at the station, he was always a bright spot as ownership and other on air faces changed.

A reporter’s reporter with a slew of Emmy statues weighing down his mantle, Kellman’s strengths have always been in showing empathy without being sappy, being sensitive while still getting answers, and just being a human, friendly person in a medium where that can’t be taken for granted.

In her seven years at WGRZ, Lisowski was paired with no fewer than five co-anchors. She came to Channel 2 in 1989 after weekend duty at Channel 7, and within a year was replacing Alison Rosati as the station’s primary female anchor, on the desk for the 5 p.m. news with Kellman and the 11 p.m. news with Don Postles.

News critic Jeff Simon called her short-lived pairing with Nick Clooney as good as the best in Buffalo TV news history.  The father of George and brother of Rosemary, Clooney was only in Buffalo for four months in 1994 before he left for a job with cable TV’s American Movie Classics channel. Lisowski also worked alongside Ed Caldwell and Marty Aarons taking turns reading the WGRZ TelePrompTer.

Since leaving the anchor chair in 1996, Lisowski has appeared as a spokesperson for a handful of local businesses — but most visibly for Frey Electric, her husband’s family company.

Buffalo in the 1880s: Bisons’ 2B is baseball’s earliest black star

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Bisons-1887FrankGrant
Buffalo Stories archives

He is often heralded as the best player the Bisons had in the 1800s, which is no small feat, as he was being matched against four Hall of Fame players. But even after his enshrinement in the Hall of Fame in 2006, 120 years after he first joined the Bisons, few know the name Frank Grant.

A 1915 story in the Buffalo Courier reads, “He played for years for The Buffalos, gained the sobriquet ‘The colored Dunlap,’ and was regarded the equal of any second baseman in the country.” The Dunlap referenced was Fred Dunlap, baseball’s highest paid player of the 1880s, and the game’s best (white) second baseman of his time.

Many believed it was Grant’s prowess on the field that effectively barred African-Americans from major league baseball for the first half of the twentieth century.

When Jackie Robinson’s desegregation of baseball was making headlines in the late ’40s, one man wrote a letter to the editor with his memories of the sport’s first crack at integration.

“As a boy, I attended games at the original park at Richmond and Summer,” wrote Ed Rother. “This was in 1886-88. Our Colored second baseman, Frank Grant, had everything our present day Jackie Robinson had, and was the idol of Buffalo fandom.”

The Bisons’ manager, John Chapman, always referred to Grant as “a Spaniard,” fearful of fan and player reaction to the truth.

His style was described by The News as “full of vim and abandon.” Grant played second base without a glove — only his bare hands — but he had to create his own special wooden shin pads from the numbers of opposing base runners who seemed to find a way to run into second (and the second baseman) spikes first. In 1888, his last year with the Bisons, his teammates refused to sit for a team portrait with him. The next season, he was playing with barnstorming teams and was an early star in the Negro Leagues.

One of very few known photos of Frank Grant comes from the Bisons' 1887 team photo. The following year, his teammates refused to sit with him for the portrait. (Buffalo Stories archives)

One of very few known photos of Frank Grant comes from the Bisons’ 1887 team photo. The following year, his teammates refused to sit with him for the portrait. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Grant visited area ball diamonds at least twice after his Bisons days. In 1894, Grant and the Cuban Giants — a barnstorming black team — played Buffalo’s amateur Oakdales at the Bisons’ home field, Olympic Park. Two years later, Grant and the Giants took on the Niagara University varsity squad.

There are historians and baseball enthusiasts who take up the case for Grant as the “greatest ever Bison,” and there is a case to be made, but the man who gets more of those than Grant is the Bisons’ second African-American player: Luke Easter. Easter broke the modern-era color barrier for the Herd after a long career in the Negro Leagues, the big leagues with Cleveland starting in 1949, and then with Rochester and Buffalo in the International League.

What it looked like Wednesday: Walden at Union, around 1958

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This aerial view of Walden at Union might have been taken in 1958 with a handful of other aerial photos of that same area with the date stamped on them.

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Buffalo News archives

Decades before the building of the Walden Galleria, Cheektowaga High School is perhaps the easiest landmark to identify. The on- and off-ramps of the Thruway on Walden at the bottom of the photo help situate the rest of the photo, as well.

Just on the right edge of the page, east of the Walden/Union intersection, is the longtime home of Brand Names.

Off in the distance, the Twin Drive-In and Twin Fair, both of which closed in 1982, can be seen at the corner of Walden and Dick.

The Google image shows the same area, turned 90 degrees, today.

Torn-Down Tuesday: ‘Green Lightning’ sculpture – an amplified hoax?

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Now it’s generally accepted that the neon sculpture “Green Lightning” by Billie Lawless was “pubic art as public art,” although the artist has maintained from the very beginning that “people’s interpretation (of neon panels depicting what most people say look like dancing cartoon penises) is up to them.”

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Billie Lawless shows a scale model of Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

Mayor Griffin famously called the sculpture obscene, and ordered it dismantled. Lawless climbed atop the piece to stop the demolition. One judge ordered that the takedown should not continue, and rebuked the mayor. Another judge ruled in favor of Lawless in a lawsuit against Griffin and the city, but awarded no damages. “Green Lightning” was displayed elsewhere with no public outcry.

That’s the two paragraph version of a story that made for great newspaper copy and TV news live reports for more than a decade, leaving out many twists and turns in the drama.

Looking back at the story and reading the daily news surrounding it as it unfolded, to dispute the notion that artist Billie Lawless pulled a hoax on city and art officials is no more in question than whether those neon sculptures are “dancing dog bones” or male sex organs. At the same time, there also are few who stood by Mayor Griffin’s decision to remove the artwork from city property in the manner he did.

Here are highlights in the “Green Lightning” saga as they unfolded in the pages of The News.

Nov. 15, 1984: A small story ran on page B-13 announcing that a sculpture was to be dedicated in the Elm-Oak arterial that afternoon.

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Nov. 16, 1984: Mayor Griffin orders “Green Lightning” removed. Arts Commission Chairman Sam Magavern said he saw nothing pornographic or questionable about the piece, but said, “If people see something in it that’s wrong, we have to change it.”

Police on the scene to direct traffic during the unveiling the night before were the first to officially raise questions. In a report to his superiors, a lieutenant from the Michigan Street Station wrote, “To my shock, I did not observe a multicolor artwork, but four neon objects anatomically resembling male genitals.” His report continued that traffic came to a crawl around the sculpture and there were several calls to the Michigan Street Station.

The artist Lawless, son of the former Common Council President William Lawless, said the images were based on graffiti that adorned a Bailey Avenue building for years and was deemed “harmless” by all who viewed it. He vehemently denied that any of the figures should be viewed as a sex organ.

“It can be viewed as other objects as well,” Lawless told reporters, with dancing dog bones famously mentioned as one seemingly plausible, but entirely dubious possibility.

David More, Executive Director of the Arts Commission, said, “There is a general consensus that the model actually approved didn’t fully indicate the suggestive nature of the piece now installed.” He went on to say, however, the public perception of the piece may have been shaded by the television coverage of the drama.

Nov. 17, 1984: Lawless stands atop his sculpture as city crews work to dismantle it. In a negotiation with police, the artist agreed to pull the plug on the neon until a judge could hear the case. Members of the Buffalo Police Salacious Literature Unit were under orders to arrest Lawless should he have tried to relight the sculpture.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

“People’s interpretation is up to them. Perhaps it has something to do with their minds,” Lawless said.

Magavern reiterated that he saw nothing wrong with the piece, but still asked Lawless to consider changing some of the panels. Lawless said he’d consider.

Nov. 20, 1984: Saying Lawless pulled “a giant hoax,” officials provided a tape recording of an Oct. 13, 1983 Urban Renewal Agency meeting, where Lawless described the neon in his work as showing an “abstracted dancing figure representing life.”

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Lawless attorney Michael Brown snapped back saying, “everybody knew what that thing was,” although when asked what he thought it was, said, “I have not seen it lit up.”

Nov. 21, 1984: With a 6-1 vote of the Urban Renewal Agency, Walt’s Tree Service, a city contractor, began taking down the four panels of the sculpture containing the controversial neon elements.

A city contractor dismantles Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

A city contractor dismantles Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

The work began after 5 p.m., but Lawless was tipped off — and was given a temporary injunction by State Supreme Justice Vincent Doyle. The court order arrived after two panels had already been taken down.

Lawless says he’ll “definitely pursue legal action” against the city for damage to “Green Lightning.” “They cut it with torches and just started to dismantle it,” Lawless told reporters.

“I don’t know if Walt is a specialist in dismantling art, but they severed it as if it was a limb off a tree,” said Lawless.

David More, the Executive Director of the Arts Commission, handed in his resignation over the debacle.

“Billie Lawless has perpetrated a hoax on the city,” More said.

Nov. 22, 1984: The News was in contact with several neon contractors who refused to bend the tubing for Lawless as he put together his sculpture.

“There is no doubt Billie knew what it was,” said Larry Woods of Neon Graphics in Clarence, who declined the job when offered. “I accused him of trying to pull something off. I never thought he’d get this far with it.”

“He said they were dancing dog bones,” reported the owner of Wilcox Bros. Sign Company, “but I’ve never seen a dog biscuit that looked like that.”

The neon elements were crafted in Albany, because none of the shops in Buffalo would do the work.

Nov. 23, 1984: Another controversial Western New York sculptor, Larry Griffis, voiced his outrage in an interview with News reporter Michael Beebe.

“To cut it down, what the hell kind of mayor do we have? What kind of city do we have?”

Griffis says it was pretty clear to him what the piece would show.

“I saw it in the shop. I thought it was just as explicit in small scale as it is now. One problem might be the kinetic (moving) portion of the fourth panel. That makes it so explicit.”

Nov. 24, 1984: The Buffalo News Editorial Board writes, “Mayor Griffin was entirely correct in objecting to the ‘Green Lightning’ sculpture in Downtown Buffalo, but he drew a deserved rebuke from State Supreme Court Justice Vincent E. Doyle for not seeking court approval before ordering the work dismantled.”

Nov. 27, 1984: Changing his earlier stance that he saw “nothing wrong with the piece,” Buffalo Art Commission Chairman Samuel Magavern signed a letter to funders calling the work “pornographic and vulgar.” Magavern also credited Mayor Griffin’s having acted “promptly and effectively” to block the display. He also told patrons that he felt duped. “We feel badly that he used us.”

Several patrons reacted to the letter with concerns that Lawless, having “pulled one over” on the city, should leave him feeling ashamed of himself “because he is really hurting other artists who want to get help from the city.”

Not all reaction was negative. One sponsor called it “stimulating, refreshing and sophisticated.”

Dec. 5, 1984: An op-ed written by Lawless and partner Kathie Simonds describes the artist’s inspiration for the figure in question. He says it was graffiti — spray paint on an imitation brick wall on Bailey Avenue, and that it had been there for years.

Saying the entirety of “Green Lightning” had not yet been explored, Lawless and Simonds say, “Ironically, the sculpture has fallen victim to its own controversy.”

Explaining what they envisioned the piece to mean, Lawless wrote, in part, that is was “burlesquing male dominance and myths attendant to male dominance.”

Dec. 11, 1984: After some criticism in the community for not printing photos showing the controversial elements of “Green Lightning,” News Editor Murray Light responds in his “Your Newspaper” column by saying, in part, “The News did not print the pictures of the illuminated neon panels because this paper does not think they should be seen in a family newspaper or should have been displayed publicly.”

Feb. 8, 1985: The city-owned plot where what’s left of “Green Lighting” still stands, was noted as a spot where city crews had been dumping snow that had piled up during the Blizzard of ’85.

May, 1985: Lawless says the “Green Lightning” controversy hasn’t hurt him financially, but most of his sales are in places like Philadelphia and Boston. “Buffalo’s shortage of yuppies is the problem,” Lawless told reporter Jane Kwiatkowski, “because young people in Buffalo just don’t buy art as they do elsewhere.”

One of the 11 lightning bolts that were part of the sculpture had gone missing, but was found in a South Buffalo backyard. The 8-foot high, 500-pound sculptural element had been swiped as a prank.

Lawless works to fix damage done to Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

Lawless works to fix damage done to “Green Lightning.” (Buffalo News archives)

June, 1985: Acting State Supreme Court Judge Wayne Feeman ordered that the city not take any further steps to remove the sculpture, but also indicated that if Lawless relit the panels, that it could be removed as a public nuisance.

June 12, 1985: The News Editorial Board again took on the “Green Lightning” controversy.

“Aside from its artistic merits, which are a matter for art critics to decide, the sculpture placed many of its viewers, and the home city of its creator, in an untenable position.

“A great many people in Buffalo and elsewhere are not comfortable with displays as garishly suggestive as this one. That’s why they don’t normally appear in such prominent places — anywhere. If Lawless placed ‘Green Lightning’ in an art gallery or sculpture park, that might not have presented a problem.

“But it is on public land, in the center of one of the city’s busiest traffic corridors. The city was left with the choice of offending many of its own citizens or opening itself up to charges of prudishness and parochialism by suppressing an artwork.”

The editorial goes on to say that Mayor Griffin’s unilateral decision to dismantle the piece — condemned by a judge — only added to the sensationalism surrounding the work.

June, 1992: Both Lawless and Mayor Griffin testified at the trial where the artist sought damages from the city.

In claiming $500,000 in damages, Lawless said the removal of “Green Lightning” “was like an assault on me.” A psychologist testified Lawless felt victimized by the city.

Griffin said he thought it was “bad art,” but ordered it down over fears it could become a “public nuisance,” creating traffic problems.

“I’m no connoisseur,” testified the mayor, “but I felt the structure was an embarrassment to downtown Buffalo,” and could also do damage to the city’s reputation.

After the two-week trial, the jury found that the city failed to take proper legal steps before dismantling “Green Lightning,” but didn’t award Lawless any monetary damages.

With the lawsuit finished and the case over, News Critic Jeff Simon wrote in part, “As I understand the decision in the Billie Lawless ‘Green Lightning’ case, the jury decided: 1. That Mayor Griffin acted like a jerk tearing it down. 2. That Lawless acted like a jerk putting it up. 3. Therefore, it’s all moot. ‘Tsk, tsk’ on the mayor and no money for Lawless… Justice seems to have been served.”

After years on display in Chicago along the Eisenhower Highway, “Green Lightning” is now dismantled and stored at Lawless’ Cleveland studio.

The patch of grass where controversy erupted remained empty for 20 years — until a new corporate headquarters helped spark a different sort of interest in the neighborhood.

“This is the gateway to downtown as you exit the 33,” Mayor Byron Brown said at a 2014 news conference announcing plans to build Catholic Health’s new headquarters where 20 years earlier “Green Lightning” had stood. “To have all of these jobs coming to downtown Buffalo builds critical mass, more people working in downtown, and more people working downtown will be there to support businesses that are located in downtown Buffalo, so it’s very good news.”

Any chance to see if Buffalo’s sensibilities have changed?

“If they want to bring it back? Any time,” Lawless said in 2014. “And if they want to pay for it, that’s not a problem.”

But for Lawless and his erecting “Green Lightning” in Buffalo in 1984, it seems that it was less about the metal and lights and more about the reaction from the very beginning.

Buffalo’s love affair with the hot dog

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

There are few things we consider more American — and relish with more Buffalove — than the hot dog, especially on a nice summer afternoon. But that wasn’t always the case.

Ted's, with Peace Bridge railing overhead. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Ted’s, with Peace Bridge railing overhead. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Around the same time Ted Liaros was opening his first red hot shack under the Peace Bridge, Mayor Frank X. Schwab was working to rid Buffalo’s streets of what he saw as the great wiener menace.

Schwab, Buffalo’s brewer mayor — who was convicted of violating Prohibition laws while in office — thought beer was OK, but the frankfurter should be banished. In 1922, he fought for and won the right to license and regulate the city’s growing number of hot dog stands with the notion to close them down, threatening to “arrest any hot dog merchant who held forth in the streets.”

It wasn’t the hot dog itself as much as the apparent willingness of hucksters to set up almost anywhere without regard to surroundings or sanitation.

A few years later, state leaders declared Buffalo’s roadside hot dogs stands “a menace to public health,” especially with regards to the keeping and selling of milk products without any proper way to stop spoilage. Dr. Edward Clark of the state health department called the red hot emporium “an institution which must be brought under special state control.”

One vendor on South Division Street was proud of his stand, and bragging of cleanliness with each patron’s “loaf of bread, hunk of meat, and smear of mustard.” The crackdown was welcomed by the owners of clean stands. “Every effort is made,” said another frankfurter hut owner, “to keep the quality of the rolls and the wieners.”

Buffalo and hot dogs were a natural marriage. For decades, Buffalo had been one of America’s leading meat packing cities, and many of the great names in meat processing have been great names in the fight to fill Buffalo’s hot dog buns.

 

At one point, the Dold name was tops with “wiener sausage.” The Jacob Dold Packing Company was Buffalo’s largest at the turn of the century, even having a display at the Pan-Am Exposition showcasing “the art of curing meats.” Dold sold out to Hygrade in 1938.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Frank Wardynski came to Buffalo from Poland in 1915, and soon after started running a butcher shop on Peckham Street in the shadow of St. Stanislaus Church in the heart of Polonia. In 1979, Wardy’s turning out three million pounds of sausage a year. Today, the company is run by third generation ownership, which also bought the rights to use the name Shelly Meats. The cold cuts and sausages of A. Szelagowski & Sons were Buffalo’s favorite for decades.

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Shelly Meats, 1983 (Buffalo News atchives)

Coming to Buffalo in the same wave of Polish immigration that brought rival Wardynski here, Joseph Malecki was a butcher in Opatowek, Poland, when he came to Buffalo in 1914. His children, Ronald and Virginia, were selling $2 million of Malecki’s Polka Brand Sausages by 1963. After 73 years of East Side sausage making, Malecki Meats closed its doors in 1988, leaving many lovers of their links heartbroken.

Maleckis---Grandmas-Choice-

Buffalo Stories archives

As the word of Malecki’s demise spread, countless Western New Yorkers made a trek to Ted’s for one last dog.

Malecki baloney. (Buffalo News archives)

Malecki baloney. (Buffalo News archives)

“This is a big shock to me and to all of us who work here,” Ted’s manager Marc Candino told The News days before the Malecki dogs dried up. “We’re still using Malecki. We expect our last shipment Monday, which means you can only get a Malecki dog here until Tuesday… with maybe a couple left over for Wednesday.”

Ted's served Malecki's hot dogs until the day the Malecki plant closed down in 1988. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Ted’s served Malecki’s hot dogs until the day the Malecki plant closed down in 1988. (Buffalo Stories archives)

 

Ted’s now serves what is the undisputed king of hot dogs in Western New York, direct from the Sahlen’s smokehouse. The Sahlen family has been processing meat and meat products for Buffalonians since 1869, and has been selling hot dogs since they started to be popular around the turn of the century.

Inspecting a Sahlen smokehouse hot dog, 1977. (Buffalo News archives)

Inspecting a Sahlen’s smokehouse hot dog, 1977. (Buffalo News archives)

In 1994, Sahlen’s was bringing in $17 million in sales — about 60 percent of which was in wieners. They were cranking out about 40 million hot dogs a year, good for 70 percent of the Buffalo hot dog market.

“Sahlen’s has always been Buffalo’s hot dog, and will always be, in my opinion,” Mark Battistoni, sales manager of Sahlen Packing Co. told The News in 2012. “We have a (143)-year history and commitment to the community.”

 

Buffalo in the ’60s: George Steinbrenner- ‘The Boss’ loved Buffalo

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The most famous (and infamous) owner in the history of sports, George Steinbrenner had a soft space in his hardened heart for Buffalo — a city that has been like a second home for generations of Steinbrenners.

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Above: The SS George Steinbrenner in the Buffalo River. The freighter was named after the grandfather of the Yankees owner, who founded the family shipping company. Below, The SS Henry Steinbrenner, a longtime regular in Buffalo’s harbor, was named for the sports magnate’s father. (Buffalo News archives)

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The Steinbrenners time in Buffalo usually revolved around the shipping industry and the family’s Kinsman Transportation Company. The Yankees owner’s grandfather, also George M. Steinbrenner, traveled to Buffalo from Cleveland quite often as the chairman of the Welfare Plan of the Lake Carriers’ Association in the 1920s. He was popular with the sailors of the Great Lakes for the care with which he provided for those who were injured or killed on the job.

Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Stories archives

It was maritime disaster that first brought the younger George Steinbrenner to Buffalo for an extended period of time. He’d already been visiting Buffalo looking for business every other Tuesday when a 1959 storm caused a Kinsman ship, the SS Michael K. Tewksbury, to break loose from her moorings and destroy the Michigan Avenue Bridge. Henry Steinbrenner sent his young son to Buffalo to handle the company’s affairs in the matter.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

The last lawsuit in the case wasn’t settled until 1968, which left Steinbrenner plenty of time to explore Buffalo’s grain hauling industry and nightlife. He first got to know Buffalo’s sports scene by hanging out at the Billboard on Washington Street, the bar where sports writers for the Courier-Express would occasionally tipple after slaving over a hot typewriter — folks like Ray Ryan, Jim Peters and a young Larry Felser.

Steinbrenner’s time on Buffalo’s bar stools was spent debating more than drinking. When the Billboard gave way to progress, “The Boss” moved his routine over to the Royal Arms on West Utica Street, where he nurtured an appreciation for live music and what would become a lifelong friendship with Max Margulis, who ran the place.

Steinbrenner speaks at the Buffalo Statler Hotel. (Buffalo News archives)

George Steinbrenner speaks at the Buffalo Statler Hotel. (Buffalo News archives)

Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin and Mel Torme all played the Royal Arms. They played in the background as Steinbrenner and Margulis, along with Jimmy Naples, put their skills and wallets together to open one of Buffalo’s all-time swank joints — the Roundtable.

Steinbrenner’s Delaware Avenue restaurant was called “The Toots Shor’s of Buffalo,” talking about the famous New York City nightspot where Frank Sinatra and Jackie Gleason were regulars. The Roundtable played host to Buffalo’s elite athletes like Jack Kemp and O.J. Simpson, figures from the political and judicial spheres, and even captains and underbosses from Buffalo’s then-powerful Mafia family.

In a story that will be familiar to Yankees fans, Steinbrenner was the money man, and Margulis and Naples knew the restaurant industry. When they bought the restaurant then known as “The Chateau,” they made some changes to set it apart as “The Roundtable.”

The first new rule was no dinner at the bar to allow for a better flow of booze to the Buffalo elite looking to unwind after a long day. The first person to try to break the rule was Steinbrenner.

As Margulis told Bill Madden with a sigh in his book on Steinbrenner, “George was George.”  He said Steinbrenner would call constantly trying to make small changes to the menu and décor, despite not understanding the business. Steinbrenner sold out his share of the restaurant as he bought the Yankees, but never forgot his pal in Buffalo.

The Blizzard of ’77 crippled many Buffalo businesses, especially downtown. The Roundtable was no exception. To help Margulis and Naples raise some fast cash, Steinbrenner organized a “Sports Night” at the Roundtable — basically rounded up as many people from the Yankees organization as he could and sent them on a plane to Buffalo for one glorious night.

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Yankees Manager Billy Martin, Max Margulis, Yankees broadcaster Mel Allen, and all-time Yankee great Mickey Mantle at a George Steinbrenner organized night at the Roundtable Restaurant in February 1977.

The event raised some cash, but not the overall prospects for the Roundtable. When it closed the following year, both Margulis and Naples’ son went to work for Steinbrenner.

Other Buffalo connections run deep as well. Dallas Green, who was the manager of the Yankees in the late ’80s, first met Steinbrenner in Buffalo when Green was pitching for the Bisons. Steinbrenner was an assistant coach under Lou Saban when the onetime Bills head coach was working at Northwestern in the ’50s. The two renewed acquaintances in Buffalo, and eventually Saban spent several years as president of the Yankees.

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Steinbrenner speaks at a Buffalo Young Leaders’ conference in 1984. (Buffalo News archives)

Before he bought the Yankees, Steinbrenner had pledged $1 million to the group trying to bring a National League expansion franchise to Buffalo in 1968. Though the years, he often referred to the time “when, not if” Buffalo would get a major league team.

He liked to use to the Bisons to stir the pot as well, often mentioning on his speaking tours of Boy Scout dinners and sports nights that he wouldn’t mind having the Bisons as the Yankees farm team.

Steinbrenner takes in a Bisons game at the Rockpile, 1979. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Steinbrenner takes in a Bisons game at the Rockpile, 1979. (Buffalo Stories archives)

“I’ve always thought Buffalo was a great sports town,” Steinbrenner told News Sports Editor Larry Felser in 1984, talking of the days in the 1960s when the International League Bisons outdrew many big league teams.

The Bisons never joined the Yankees organization, but were undoubtedly used as a bargaining chip in the negotiation of countless minor league affiliation agreements.

Buffalo was Steinbrenner’s home base when he explored trying to buy the NHL’s Colorado Rockies, meeting with Rockies owner Peter Gilbert in Buffalo in 1982. Steinbrenner also mentioned often in his speeches here that he’d always lamented not taking up an early offer to invest in the group working to bring NHL hockey to Buffalo.

The day George Steinbrenner announced his purchase of the Yankees in 1973, The News wrote that Steinbrenner’s shipping empire “operates most of the vessels that enter Buffalo Harbor with grain cargoes from the head of the Great Lakes, the tugboats that escort them to the big waterfront elevators, and the company that hires the crews to unload them — Great Lakes Associates, with offices in the Crosby Building.”

Three years later, when speaking at a sports night at the Buffalo Athletic Club, Steinbrenner told the crowd that they shouldn’t get down on the city he cared so much about, and even lived in for a short time.

“It hurts me to see Buffalonians down on their city,” Steinbrenner said. “I’ve had good times here, and have always loved the people of Buffalo. I’ve always had an up feeling about this city.”

What it looked like Wednesday: Buffalo Harbor, 1961

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This 1961 photo shows crews creating a new opening for Buffalo Harbor in the old breakwall.

Buffalo News archives

The multiphase project started in 1958 and took several years, with the dredging of the lake side of the breakwall to 26 feet, the dredging of the harbor side, then the improvements to the wall including cutting a new entrance and the building of another 1,800-foot detached breakwater out in the lake to protect that new harbor entrance.

Most of the 170,000 tons of stone used to build the new wall was quarried in Bedford, Ind., and channels as deep as 30 feet were dug in order to allow ships passing through the deeper channels of the St Lawrence Seaway to enter Buffalo Harbor. One immediate impact was larger loads of raw materials having direct access to the Bethlehem Steel plant.

The lighthouse seen in the background was replaced with the project as well — it had been tilted since being hit by a freighter. A new automatic lighthouse was built as the final phase of construction.

By the time the project was finished in 1963, the total cost topped $8 million.

Torn-Down Tuesday: George Meyer Malting on Niagara Street, a vestige of Buffalo’s brewing days

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The beers and ales brewed in Buffalo by Simon Pure and Iroquois were among Western New York’s favorites for generations. When those breweries were both shuttered in the early 1970s, Buffalo’s days as a brewery city were mostly over — although vestiges of the process took a bit longer to come off line.

Buffalo News archives

It wasn’t until 1984 when Buffalo’s great brewing operations finally had “last call” when Detroit’s Stroh Brewing Company pulled the plug on the Schaefer Beer malting facility on Niagara Street.

The building had a long history in brewing and related industries. On Niagara Street at the foot of Lafayette across from Santasiero’s restaurant, the George J. Meyer Malting Company took over the warehouse and elevator from Niagara Malting in 1906.

In 1953, the facility was the largest barley malting operation east of Chicago. The company’s three malt houses would process 100,000 acres-worth of Midwest barley every year.

Part of the campus of buildings was lost to the building of the I-190 in the mid-1950s. A 1991 fire scuttled plans to reuse the building after Schaefer moved out. In 2006, the grain elevator was torn down the same week that the H-O grain elevator was cleared to make way for the Seneca Nation’s Buffalo Creek Casino.

Buffalo Stories archives/Library of Congress

New York State provided $600,000 to clean up the brownfield site in 2007, and in 2016, the “Grain to Green” initiative was started by the nonprofit Vision Niagara group. The plan is to provide green space amidst some of the new development on that part of Niagara Street.

Buffalo in the ’80s: Pioneering female news anchor Carol Jasen

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

When 28-year-old Carol Crissey came to Buffalo at the tail end of the 1970s, her resume boasted a working knowledge of four languages (German, Spanish, French, plus Greek and Latin) and four instruments (cello, guitar, oboe and piano).

Buffalo News archives

Leaving Buffalo 25 years later, she was Buffalo’s pre-eminent and “most watchable” news anchor.

Often described as “elegant” in the pages of The News by reporters and critics, readers also voted Carol as the “Sexiest Woman in Western New York” several years running in the late ’90s.

With Kevin O’Connell, 1990. (Buffalo News archives)

Carol was there as the world and the world of TV news became increasingly less misogynistic. At stodgy, stuffy old Channel 4, where until recently the TV news anchors hadn’t changed much since the ’50s, Carol was the first woman to anchor the news regularly on weeknights. It was news — glimmer of hope for humanity variety — when she signed a contract that would allow her to anchor the news into her 40s.

“There was a time when I thought I wouldn’t have a job in my mid-30s,” she told News Critic Alan Pergament in 1987. “When I started in broadcasting in 1973 … women weren’t allowed to age on television.”

Another glass ceiling was broken when she signed a contract that would send her into our homes at 6 and 11 past her 50th birthday.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” she reflected in 1998. “When I heard that women in their mid- to late 40s were considered very valuable, it did my heart very good. I’m told it’s because baby boomers are watching other baby boomers.”

Buffalo Mayoral debate, 1985. (Buffalo News archives)

Through the 23 years she worked at WIVB-TV, Carol Jasen (who is noe known as Carol Crissey-Nigrelli) anchored at various times the noon, 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts with a long list of co-anchors. Her first assignment was co-anchoring with John Beard in 1980, then Bob Koop in 1981, Kevin O’Connell in 1990, Don Postles in 1993, and occasional stints with Rick Pfeiffer, Rich Newberg and Kathy Polanko, among others.

On set with Bob Koop, 1986. (Buffalo News archives)

Through most of those years, Carol and her co-anchor were No. 2 in the ratings, as the less theatrical alternative to Irv, Rick and Tom on Channel 7. After one late ’80s ratings jump closed the gap with Eyewitness News, News Critic Anthony Violanti prophesied, “Move over Uncle Irv. Here comes Aunt Carol.” After Irv Weinstein’s retirement in 1998, Carol and Channel 4 took over the No. 1 spot until she retired and beyond.

With Jasen becoming Buffalo’s most popular and longest-tenured news anchor with Weinstein gone, in Irv’s book– handing the hairspray-can-baton over to Carol seemed to be as good a choice as any.

“Carol is not only one of the best anchors, she’s also got class,” Weinstein said upon Carol’s induction to the Buffalo Broadcasting Hall of Fame. “We were competitors, but we were enemies who thoroughly respected each other.”

Buffalo News archives

Carol retired from TV news in 2002 and married former Channel 4 reporter Craig Nigrelli, who is now a news anchor in Omaha. Looking at television news today, she’s glad she played her part when she did.

“If I was a success at Ch. 4,” she told News critic Jeff Simon in 2011, “it was because I was surrounded by professionals. The anchors, producers, reporters and photographers all had years of experience. In the age before the Internet, every newsroom had walking, talking encyclopedias who could tell you the history of the city, the history of an issue, the movers and shakers in town — and they were willing to teach anyone who was new.”

The Buffalo You Should Know: How we lost the Larkin Administration Building

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

At the turn of the century, The Buffalo-based Larkin Company was one of the nation’s largest retailers, first selling soap, and eventually a range of items — second only to Sears & Roebuck — from its catalogs that reached 1.5 million homes.

Drawing of the company complex from a Larkin publication, 1925 (Buffalo Stories archives)

The money being sent into the Larkin complex near Seneca and Swan streets was unprecedented. It was enough that $4 million didn’t seem too steep when executives, impressed with Larkin Secretary Darwin D. Martin’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home, asked Wright to design a new administration building for the company. The structure, the cost of which would be close to $100 million in 2016 dollars, was completed in 1906.

From a postcard (Buffalo Stories archives)

At the time, the office space was the latest in modern design. It was lauded by those who appreciated art and architecture around the world, and pointed to as an example of the country’s “coming of age” in design innovation. When an exhibition showcasing three centuries of American architecture moved from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to the Albright (now Albright-Knox) Art Gallery in Buffalo in 1938, Buffalo’s Larkin Administration Building was one of the stars.

“It has received considerable praise for the boldness with which the architect cut with tradition in order to bring light into hitherto gloomy interiors,” said one review. Wright took credit for designing the country’s first metal office furniture for the structure.

The design also made it a pleasant place to work, with a mix of natural and artificial light, waterfalls, and a pipe organ all meant to make the day’s toil a bit less burdensome for the everyday Joe working there. It was the jewel in the Larkin crown for 30 years.

In a gross simplification, through the Depression business dwindled for the Larkin Company. The Frank Lloyd Wright-designed headquarters building, where incoming mail-order cash was once loaded into quickly filled bushel baskets for easy carrying, was renovated into a Larkin storefront in 1939 when the mail-order business died out.

Larkin Co. collectibles were shown in a 2004 exhibit at the Larkin at Exchange Building. These Larkin Co. products were part of a collection from Gail Belliveau of Willington, Conn. (Sharon Cantillon/News file photo)

Announcements of the building’s conversion mix awe of Wright’s “sensational” and “outstanding” structure, while also bragging of the “modernizing” of the interior — stripping it of most of Wright’s design.

Larkin stumbled into the war years. In 1940, Larkin and subsidiaries were $38,000 in arrears to the City of Buffalo for taxes and looking to make payment plans. Three years later, cash-strapped Larkin sold its headquarters building to a Pennsylvania real estate investor, who had hoped to turn a profit with possible federal government interest in the building.

The hopes of that out-of-state investor were never realized, and the City of Buffalo seized the building for back taxes.

As one of the few open spaces in the city that could accommodate such an enterprise, in 1946 it was hoped that the building might become Buffalo’s new Veteran’s Administration headquarters, but the current Bailey Avenue structure was built instead.

Once that plan fell through, the City Council discussed an offer to buy the building — which was assessed at $237,000 — for $26,000. City Comptroller George Wanamaker said the offer was too low, and asked that he be allowed to advertise the building nationally and locally.

The council approved $6,000 to advertise the building, although Council Majority Leader George Evans called it “gambling with the taxpayers’ money,” saying that every real estate person in Buffalo knows the building is available.

In January 1947, large ads were taken out in a total of seven papers in New York and Chicago, as well as The Buffalo Evening News and the Courier-Express.

Buffalo Stories archives

Three months after the advertising blitz, there were plenty of inquiries, but no bids. Wanamaker also tried to market the 92,000-square foot building to someone who might convert it to housing, but city engineers eventually determined that the site wasn’t appropriate for housing. The state was offered the building as a record storage facility, but the offer was declined.

Based apparently more on the structuring of the contract than the money, the Common Council rejected a second offer, this one $25,000, in Jun, 1947.

During a time when The Buffalo Evening News and the Courier-Express rarely agreed on any editorial stance, both papers took up one official’s calling the Wright masterpiece “a white elephant.”

Admitting that the building seemed to have no commercial appeal, Mayor Bernard Dowd offered it to the county, which was looking for space to house some offices. He said the building had “attractive features” for municipal work, but it never came to be.

Nearly a year passed before another offer was received. It was again for $26,000, and it was again rejected as too low. A month later, however, a $500 option to buy the building for that amount was accepted. Whether the councilmen who voted to accept the offer knew who the actual bidder was or not is unclear, but published reports named Chestor, Inc., a local real estate company, as the buyer on behalf of an undisclosed client.

It was eventually unveiled that the bidder was Magnus Benzing, manager of the Magnus Beck Brewery. While he wouldn’t unveil his plans, he did say they weren’t brewing or housing related. Benzing eventually declined his option, and the building sat empty.

An informational marker on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building stands at Swan and Seymour streets. (Buffalo News file photo)

During the spring of 1949, Ellicott District Councilman Joseph Dudzick — famous as the inspiration for the gin mill owner in his son Tom’s “Over the Tavern” plays — proposed the Larkin Administration Building be transformed into a recreation center.

“This once-beautiful structure that attracted visitors from all over the world has become an eyesore and a tax-devouring white elephant,” said ‘Big Joe’ Dudzick. “Practically everybody who has looked at it with the intention of using the building for business purposes has declared it beyond repair for practical business use. There is no wisdom in allowing the building to deteriorate further until it becomes a pile of crumbling brick, especially when it can be put to good use in building the bodies, minds and character of the city’s youth.”

“We’ve got a community blight on our hands,” said Dudzick, “But it can be transformed into a worthwhile medium to combat juvenile delinquency.”

It was another idea to save the building which never made it past the proposal stage.

On Sept. 13, 1949, the Common Council voted to sell Frank Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Administration Building — once the most modern office building in the world — for the sum of $5,000, with the knowledge that it was another unknown bidder’s intention to demolish the building and then replace it with a new structure to add back to the tax rolls.

Immediate reaction to the sale to Buffalo’s Western Trading Company was positive. The term “white elephant” and a relieved sigh of “finis” were thrown around, as it was clear the city wanted to be rid of the burden of this building.

Unlike his predecessor Wanamaker, new City Comptroller Edward Neider had been doing his best to “dispose of” the property and bring it back to the city tax rolls since he’d “inherited it” upon assuming the office.

“I believe the city has made the best possible disposition in accepting an offer of purchase for $5,000,” the comptroller said. Outside City Hall, however, the impeding demolition was panned by architects and architecture historians everywhere, including on the pages of New York City newspapers.

In this photo from 2006, a wall stands at Swan and Seymour streets marking the location of the Larkin Administration Building. The Seneca Industrial Complex on Seneca Street looms in the background. (Buffalo News file photo)

While vandals had begun the work of demolishing the building, stripping it of nearly every light fixture, doorknob and plumbing line, the solidly built steel framed and poured-concrete girded building took an agonizing six months and six figures to demolish.

Larkin historian Jerome Puma writes that pieces of “the building that was meant to last forever” do live on, however humbly. Chunks of stone and brick from the building were used to backfill the Ohio Basin, and the 24-inch steel floor beams made by Bethlehem Steel were last known to be holding the earth in place above a West Virginia coal mine.

After the world-famous structure was cleared away, Western Trading petitioned Buffalo’s Common Council for a variance to move the truck terminal they had planned for the site, saying in part that the newly opened up land would just be too valuable as a parking lot for the rest of the Larkin complex. The council agreed, and the space remains a parking lot to this day.