Search Results for: Parkside

Delaware Park and the Buffalo Zoo: Parkside’s Biggest Pride & Biggest Battle

Parkside’s Biggest Battle: The Buffalo Zoo For better or for worse, the histories of Parkside and the Buffalo Zoological Gardens have really been inseparable. From Elam Jewett’s care of the first two deer donated to the city in 1870,  to the arrival of Frank the Elephant in 1905, to the Depression-era WPA improvements that built … Continue reading Delaware Park and the Buffalo Zoo: Parkside’s Biggest Pride & Biggest Battle

Parkside Goes Hollywood

Though usually thought of in terms of a staid, august, and venerable neighborhood, Parkside has also seen its share of glitz and glamour.  For the same reason so many Buffalonians are attracted to its wonderful architecture and tree-lined streets, Hollywood producers have also taken notice over the years. For three weeks in February, 1982, Summit … Continue reading Parkside Goes Hollywood

Parkside’s City living constants, places of worship, and places to learn

Keeping a Thumb on City Living Constants While maintaining the value and physical appearance of housing stock is of critical importance, so too, were a number of other battles the PCA has fought along the way. The Parkside Community Association has led many charges over the years in keeping the community one of the city’s … Continue reading Parkside’s City living constants, places of worship, and places to learn

Shifting Ideology in Parkside and Buffalo’s oldest community association

Ideological Shift Parkside’s long-standing reputation as a politically conservative area predated the carving out of the neighborhood by Frederick Law Olmsted. The Granger Family, the first long-term white settlers in the area, was originally sent here with political patronage jobs from Thomas Jefferson. The Granger family’s stone mansion on property that it now a part … Continue reading Shifting Ideology in Parkside and Buffalo’s oldest community association

Urban Renewal, Social Upheaval, Integration, and the Parkside Community Association

“Urban Renewal” After the war, people wanted to leave the worn city behind, in favor of bright, clean, shiny new suburbs. And what better way to get people to the suburbs than 4 and 6 lane divided highways. The original thought was enthusiastic, but, as later admitted, misguided. Planners said when the population along the … Continue reading Urban Renewal, Social Upheaval, Integration, and the Parkside Community Association

Prohibition, Depression, & Wars in Parkside

Main Street was the backbone of the Parkside neighborhood that was pretty well built out by about 1920; most structures built after then were built either on subdivided larger lots, or on lots where a previous structure was either burned or by some other means destroyed. The 1920s were a wonderful time in the prosperous … Continue reading Prohibition, Depression, & Wars in Parkside

Grover Cleveland’s ties to Parkside and the birth of modern anesthesia: Sisters Hospital & The Marine Hospital

While they owned much of the property along the neighborhood’s southern border, and taught at St. Vincent de Paul, Mt St Joe’s, Medaille, St. Mark, and St Mary’s School for the Deaf, the Sisters of St. Joseph haven’t been the only Catholic nuns along the Parkside section of Main Street. The Sisters of Charity established … Continue reading Grover Cleveland’s ties to Parkside and the birth of modern anesthesia: Sisters Hospital & The Marine Hospital

Former Main Street institutions of the Parkside era now part of the Canisius campus

Parkside Historian Michael Riester puts forth the thesis, “As goes Main Street, so goes Parkside.” The following pages will take a look at Main Street in three separate sections: The institutions of the area, the automobile showrooms, and, finally the small businesses; the shops and storefronts where most people did most of their spending and … Continue reading Former Main Street institutions of the Parkside era now part of the Canisius campus

“The Main Street” near Parkside

Of course, following the rail and the streetcar to Parkside soon enough was the automobile. King’s Official Route Book was the Mapquest.com of the early automobile era. It gave new drivers not only street names as far as getting from one place to another, but offered landmarks as well in an era when street signs … Continue reading “The Main Street” near Parkside

Getting Around Parkside and Beyond

The Beltline Railway, which helped open up Parkside to development, was eventually too industrial for the sensitivities of the upwardly mobile new residents of Parkside to handle. One of life-long Parkside resident Bob Venneman’s earliest memories was of a 1918 freight train crash. He spoke of the crash with the Parkside News in 1988. The … Continue reading Getting Around Parkside and Beyond