By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The essence of Buffalo Stories is defining and celebrating the people, places, and things that make Buffalo… Buffalo.
That’s Buffalo’s pop culture heritage-– and that’s what you’ll find as you scroll through these stories or search the collected works of one of WNY’s most prolific pop culture historians of the last decade for something specific…
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
It was General Motors’ new, experimental, lightweight “dream train” on display at the New York Central Terminal in January 1956.
Buffalo News archives
The 10 passenger cars on the train were modified motor coach buses.
Also known as “The Aerotrain,” it was set to go into regular service between Detroit and Chicago later that year.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Norman Besso and his wife Rosemary opened Manny’s Supper Club on Delaware near Virginia in 1961.
Buffalo News archives
Following a fire in the former Shadow Restaurant in 1974, Besso had the structure on the corner — boarded up and covered with political signs — torn down in 1977 to make way for a parking lot.
Known for excellent cuts of steak, mussels ala Norman, and black bean soup for 32 years, Manny’s closed in 1993. It was three years later that artist Frank Cravotta painted the now landmark lion mural on the side of the building where Shadow once stood.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
From 1889 to 1960, the International League Buffalo Bisons played at East Ferry, Masten and Michigan.
For the first 35 years, Buffalo Baseball Park was barely more than glorified wooden bleachers. But under the direction of team owner and Erie County Sheriff Frank Offermann, Bison Stadium opened in 1924. The park was renamed in Offermann’s memory when he died unexpectedly at the age of 59.
The city owned Offermann Stadium, and in 1960, the land was reclaimed to build Woodlawn Junior High, which today is Buffalo Academy of Visual and Performing Arts.
As a city-owned facility, Offermann Stadium and its predecessors were open to far more than just baseball. This 1920s photo shows a lacrosse game, and outfield ads for, among other items, Buffalo-brewed Phoenix Beer.
Buffalo News archives
The extreme right side shows some players standing behind the play, an outfield ad for baseball tickets, and several homes — including one with a distinctive turret.
While sports fans no longer look at the house, it doesn’t look much different 90 years later for students staring out one of the Woodlawn Avenue windows at Performing Arts.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
SolarCity is promising 1,500 jobs at its currently under construction South Buffalo location, which marks a big turnaround.
Buffalo News archive
For nearly three decades there seemed to be little hope for the vacant, decayed brownfield. The area now known as the RiverBend, where the Buffalo River meets South Park Avenue, was home to a steel plant and chemical factories, making the area highly contaminated. There weren’t resounding calls for remediation and reuse.
But the area was once home to thousands of good-paying jobs. Buffalo Color, the last part of a much-larger operation that was once National Aniline and Allied Chemical, closed in 2000. Across the river, Republic Steel closed and tore down its steel plant in the early 1980s.
This photo shows the build out of both National Aniline and Republic Steel in 1949. The single drawbridge at the top of the photo went over South Park Avenue. As you can see in the Google Maps image below, most, if not all of the buildings pictured are now gone, but new buildings with new jobs are coming up in their place.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
It was November 5, 1981, when the sign for the William Hengerer Company was replaced by Sibley’s.
Buffalo News archives
Hengerer’s had been in downtown Buffalo for 105 years when the name was changed. Buffalo’s Hengerer’s and Rochester’s Sibley’s had long been owned by the same parent company.
The downtown store in this photo was closed in 1987, and Sibley’s was eventually merged into Kaufmann’s in 1990. Most remaining Kaufmann’s locations became Macy’s in 2006.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
As Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” was on the air from 1963 to 1985, Buffalonians were always quick to claim the host Marlin Perkins as one of our own.
Buffalo News archives
America’s best-known animal lover in the TV age, Perkins grew and expanded the Buffalo Zoo in the years he was curator and then director in the 1930s and 1940s.
Perkins is pictured in 1944 as he was leaving for a new post in Chicago, accepting a suitcase from Eddie the Chimp.
For as famous as Perkins was around the country, he could barely compete with the sensation he created at the Buffalo Zoo.
Eddie was the Buffalo Zoo’s first chimpanzee when he arrived from Africa in 1940. Eddie was friendly and willing to take direction, and Perkins and staff had soon taught Eddie to dance and to shave his keeper — with a straight razor. It was clear that Eddie loved the limelight, and would seemingly do anything for applause. Keepers dressed him in a Marine uniform and the chimp raised money for the USO during World War II.
But soon after Eddie became an adult — when he was 5 or 6 years old — Eddie stopped wanting to perform. One handler said it was pretty clear that Eddie thought of himself as more human than chimp. He never associated with the other chimps and never mated.
By the early 1950s, Eddie was clearly angry. The banana peels he’d fling at passersby were the least offensive organic matter one might get pelted with.
In the late 1950s, after Eddie spat at and threw dung at a group of passing VIPs, glass was placed between Eddie and zoo visitors and the barrier seemed to suit him just fine.
For more than 30 years, visitors to the zoo didn’t know what they might get from Eddie. Maybe a dance, reminiscent of the way he was in the 1940s … or maybe the show looked more like something from a bawdy boys high school locker room.
That was part of Eddie’s somewhat sad draw though — never knowing what you might see.
At the age of 47, Eddie the Chimp was the oldest resident at the Buffalo Zoo when he was euthanized after suffering a stroke in 1985. Perkins died the next year.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
For many of us, imagining what Buffalo looked like before the urban renewal efforts of the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s can be tough.
Buffalo News archives
Perhaps one of the most difficult ideas to grasp is that the area we now call “Canalside” and the area we think of as “downtown” were really a single continuous area without any sort of distinct border.
The massive Skyway/I-190 complex of elevated roadways and interchanges make far more of a statement than the previous few elevated railbeds in the same footprint did.
The several block imprint of the Marine Midland Tower also acts as a psychological “You Are Now Leaving Downtown” sign for anyone trying to walk from the business district to the inner harbor.
This 1890s photo was taken in the 100 block of Main Street. These buildings once stood in the massive area now filled with One Seneca Tower, which was known as Marine Midland Tower when it opened as Buffalo’s tallest building in 1970, and later known as HSBC Tower, when Marine Midland Bank was sold.
Some of the businesses visible in this photo include one still in operation.
Scheeler & Sons, at 145 Main St., became Buffalo Wire Works in 1903. The plant is now on Clinton Street in Buffalo.
Buffalo Stories archives
Two doors down at 139 Main is Russell & Watson. Founder William Russell came to Buffalo in 1830 at the age of 3 on a canal boat with his parents, settling on the outskirts of the city at what is now Huron and Franklin, a block south of Chippewa Street. One of his favorite memories of youth was hunting squirrels with his father around what is now Delaware and Huron. He started selling ship and hotel supplies at this location in 1859. He died at 92 in 1919.
The saloon at 131 Main St. was a pretty rough and tumble place in the 1890s.
Following a brawl inside the gin mill in 1896, 16 men were arrested. First Precinct police needed two wagon trips to haul in all the offenders. The men spent the night in lockup before being fined $5 apiece at sunrise court.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
A 1984 look inside the beer cooler of a Buffalo grocery store reveals that even the things that never change don’t always stay the same.
Buffalo News archives
Products offered by Labatt Brewing Company still remain the most popular beers in Buffalo, but there are some differences.
It was later in the 1980s when Labatt phased out the stubby bottle cases shown here in favor of what they first promoted as “Big Blue,” a 16-oz. bottle.
Labatt 50 Ale was one of Buffalo’s most popular beers for decades, as reflected in the heavy stocking of the beer in this photo. It’s now sometimes difficult to find even in Canada.
Also, it wasn’t until the 1990s when Labatt’s Beer officially became “Labatt Blue,” the nickname by which it had been known for decades.
Otherwise, generic plain label beer—available at Bells markets—was wildly popular with Western New Yorkers shopping for price.
The 1980s were also the decade of the wine cooler. Until then, the Mogen David Winery in Westfield was best known for its kosher Concord wines. Many who were college or high school students during that era in Western New York (and across the Northeast) might remember MD 20/20 flavors like Hawaiian Blue and pink grapefruit. Those same folks might be surprised to know that the MD actually stands for “Mogen David,” not “Mad Dog,” as the wine product was known.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
An undated look, likely from the mid-’60s, of a tired flight home for the Buffalo Bills.
Buffalo News archives
Among those in the photo are future Erie County Executive and Bills halfback Ed Rutkowski, standing; in the foreground to the left is the wide receiver best known as “Golden Wheels,” Elbert Dubenion; and to the right is defensive back Butch Byrd, the five time AFL All-Star, drafted by Buffalo from Boston University in 1964.
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The answer to the question which still gets mumbled around Riverside without a satisfactory answer is May 1986. That’s when the elephants came down.
Buffalo News archive
Twin elephants stood atop the Wood & Brooks building at Kenmore Avenue and Ontario Street for much of the 20th century. The massive sheet metal and neon pachyderms towered over the neighborhood as a reminder of what was being manufactured and assembled there — the ivory keys and keyboards of some of America’s finest pianos.
The plant opened in 1901. Eventually, as the world’s largest keyboard manufacturer, Wood & Brooks was turning out more than 100,000 every year from the Riverside facility for use in instruments created by Steinway, Baldwin, Wurlitzer and many others.
By the early ’50s, business was still booming, but the elephants were a reminder of days gone by. Wood & Brooks was still among the world’s largest ivory importers — taking in 25,000 pounds every year, but 90 percent of all piano key coverings were plastic. By 1970, much of the assembly work for the keyboards had been sent to Mexico, and by the mid-’70s, Wood & Brooks had played its last song.
After more than a decade of neglect, the once colorful elephants were more rust than paint, and the once bright neon had stopped glowing. Many Riverside neighbors hated to see the elephants go, but the consensus was it was far more difficult to see the industry leave in the first place.
