By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Buffalo in the ’80s: Minnie Gillette, grassroots community pioneer
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The Buffalo News called Minnie Gillette “a feisty political figure who strayed from party lines in the interest of her constituents.”
Concerned with the plight of those in her Fruit Belt community, she fought for what was best for the entire Western New York community as a whole.
“I want to find out the barriers we need to overcome to admit inner-city youth to county employment programs,” Gillette said shortly before being elected as Erie County’s first African-American legislator in 1977, representing mostly the city’s Ellicott District. “We need to develop a meaningful plan to attract all youth back to the city.”
“She was a peacemaker who had a talent for resolving differences,” said fellow Erie County lawmaker Joan Bozer, who also called her “hard-working, compassionate, very savvy and hard-working person who was always trying to bring people together.”
Gillette’s work with food pantries, block clubs, the mentally handicapped, and employment programs left an indelible mark on the families and communities she served, but her biggest regional victory came in saving Buffalo’s old downtown post office. She and fellow County Legislator Joan Bozer led the efforts to covert the historical building into ECC’s downtown campus.
“She cajoled, stirred and strong-armed her colleagues into turning this building into the fine college it is now,” County Executive Dennis Gorski remembered. “She served her community well and with dedication.”
Within weeks of her death from cancer at the age of 62, the auditorium at the ECC City Campus was renamed in her honor.
Len Lenihan, who served with Gillette in the Legislature and later served as County Democratic Chairman and now as Elections Commissioner, said Gillette was not a traditional politician, and long after her time in elected office was over, she “continued her work as a tireless advocate for the homeless, the poor and the needy.”
“Her principal concern was serving her constituents, which she did extremely well,” said Lenihan. “She rarely got involved in partisan politics.”
A lifelong Democrat, her forays into “partisan politics” often got her in trouble with the party brass. She said Republicans offered her a greater voice for her ideas and her community, so she caucused with them while serving in the Legislature.
She was also fired as an elections inspector after supporting Buffalo Mayor James D. Griffin instead of the endorsed Democrat in a 1991 race. Officials claimed the two weren’t connected, but Gillette did get her inspector job back.
In remembering Gillette, News reporter Rose Ciotta wrote, “The people who knew Minnie Gillette say she has left a rich legacy. The record books will say she was the first African-American woman elected to the Erie County Legislature. But the books that count will say Minnie Gillette epitomized grassroots power. It’s impossible to think that anyone can ever do it like she did.
“Those who eulogized her said she was her community’s ‘Ghetto Queen’ because she showed them how to be welcomed at the tables of the powerful while never forgetting her own roots.”
Buffalo in the ’20s: Buffalo’s pro-booze, anti-swimsuit Mayor Schwab
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
“While Buffalo girls are in the front rank so far as feminine pulchritude is concerned; I do not believe their charms should be exploited,” Mayor Frank X. Schwab told reporters in 1927. It was front page news when Schwab — who was also owner of the Buffalo Brewing Company — told the Miss America pageant that no girl from Buffalo would be appearing with his endorsement.
“Both as mayor of the City of Buffalo and as the father of seven children, I have never been impressed favorably with bathing and beauty contests. To my mind they set up a false standard in the minds of young people, and the resultant evils and disadvantages more than offset any ephemeral fame which these contests bring to the various cities.
“For this reason I decline to comply with your request that as chief executive of the city I give to the young lady selected through your contest as Miss Buffalo a letter of introduction to the mayor of Atlantic City.
“It is simply my decision, as mayor of the city and as a father, that I think Buffalo will be better off and certainly none the worse, if it has no young lady compete in this so-called national beauty contest.”
Among the many letters Mayor Schwab received in response to his refusal there was only one deriding his decision. Ministers and mothers wrote letters of thanks, while the local contest promoter wrote asking him to reconsider.
Mayor Schwab stood firm, saying the contest doesn’t serve to elevate girls from Buffalo or anywhere else in the country. Apparently, many agreed with Schwab.
While the Atlantic City bathing suit contest started its annual skin show in 1920, the year of Schwab’s protest — 1927 — was the pageant’s last year until 1932. At first, it was claims of “promoting loose morals” which scuttled the show, followed by the Depression. By the end of the ’30s, a talent competition was added and girls under the age of 18 were no longer allowed to enter.
In commending Schwab, Rev. W. Earl Ledden, pastor of the Richmond Avenue M. E. Church, likened the affair to a cattle call.
“Your letter to the Atlantic City authorities reveals moral dignity and insight, and I take pleasure in expressing to you my hearty approval. The bathing beauty affair is simply a publicity stunt for Atlantic City, a clever method of stretching the hotel season a week. And the method places our young womanhood on a plane too close to that of the Chicago stockyards to merit moral and official sanction.”
It was one of the few times where Schwab received public support from Buffalo’s Protestant leaders. Not only was Schwab Catholic, he was also under federal indictment. As the owner of a brewery, he stood accused of possessing (and brewing) beer with an alcohol content higher than 3 percent in violation of Prohibition laws.
After two terms as mayor, Schwab was defeated in his re-election bid by Charles Roesch, a Broadway Market meat cutter and the original “Charlie the Butcher.”
What it looked like Wednesday: Medical Campus area, 1978
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
In November 1978, News Photographer Bill Dyviniak grabbed his camera to take a few shots in the area we now call the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Then, it was the cold and abandoned neighborhood bounded by Buffalo General Hospital and Roswell Park Cancer Institute to the north, and the still-buzzing M. Wile and Trico factories and Courier-Express presses to the south.
It’s unclear whether the images were shot for a specific story or whether it was feared that the buildings might not last the winter. The folder was labeled “Landmarks to be demolished near Main & Carlton.”
Photographs of three separate “landmarks” were in that folder — and despite all the construction around that area over the last 40 years, from the MetroRail station at Allen Street to the ever-growing Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, all three buildings still stand to this day.
The 19th-century Italianate houses on Washington Street are currently a part of the BNMC’s Green Commons project. They were saved from the wrecker’s ball in the late 70’s through the work of preservationists like Austin Fox working with the city and surrounding community.
Just west of those houses, stands the Roosevelt Apartments. The exterior has been rehabilitated and the Bells Market has long since closed.
A few blocks away at Ellicott and Virginia survives Ulrich’s, Buffalo’s oldest continuously operated tavern.
Torn-Down Tuesday: Niagara and Amherst streets, 1971
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
“One gateway to Riverside” was the title of this photo when it was published in The News in 1971.
“The photo (is) in the immediate vicinity of Amherst and Niagara Sts., where traffic from the Niagara section of the Thruway makes one of its exits into the Riverside-Black Rock area.
“It IS an old area. Some of its settlers were there before the turn of the century. They were property proud. But the community’s pride has suffered in recent years. Blight has made incursions there too.”
This old tavern was built as a “store block and row of flats” by Frederick Lenz in 1909. A tavern since at least 1919, it was known through the years as Charles Haas’ saloon, Bob & Ginger’s Saloon, the River-Rock Grill, and Millitello’s, among other names.
The building’s location — only yards from the watery international border — made it a hot spot during Prohibition years. In 1929, Augusta Lindforth was arrested behind the bar while tending four half-barrels of beer.
The spot where this building stood — southwest corner of Niagara and Amherst — has been a parking lot for decades now.
Buffalo in the ’70s: Hubert Humphrey and the Buffalo Braves
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Vice President Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic nominee for president in 1968 when he lost to Richard Nixon in the general election. In 1971, as he contemplated another run at Nixon the following year, he stopped in Buffalo for a pre-campaign visit and to take in the Buffalo Braves home opener at The Aud.
Senator Humphrey appears to be having a better time than Mayor Frank Sedita as the former VP gets ready to lob the ball out onto the court.
Humphrey visits quickly with the Braves cheerleaders. No record of whether an “ooh, ahh… Hubert on the warpath” chant broke out.
Fans directly behind them in the golds and reds don’t seem too interested in the courtside conversation going on between Braves owner Paul Snyder, Braves Captain Walt Hazzard, Vice President Humphrey, and Mayor Sedita. That night, Hazzard, in his first game with the Braves after being acquired from the Hawks in the offseason, led the Braves with 14 points as they were pounced by the Seattle Supersonics, 123-90.
What it looked like Wednesday: The City Hall site, 1913
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Nearly single handedly, and through the pig-headed will of his convictions, Judge Samuel Wilkeson essentially invented Buffalo.
Wilkeson was born in Pennsylvania and first came to Buffalo as a soldier defending the village as it burned in 1813. Following the war, he made his home in the village as it was being rebuilt. As a trader in various items like salt and whiskey, Wilkeson understood the importance of a good port — and knew for Buffalo to grow, the harbor had to be improved.
Despite having never seen an artificial harbor in his life, in 1820, he started overseeing the construction of a new harbor in Buffalo. Two years later, with the widening and sandbar removal almost done, he argued that the planned Erie Canal should terminate in Buffalo, not in Black Rock as argued by future Niagara Falls pioneer and Secretary of War Peter Porter. Buffalo was chosen and the fate of the pioneer village was sealed.
The canal was completed in 1825, and the following year, Wilkeson built his stately home on Niagara Square. After holding a handful of elected offices and judgeships, Wilkeson was elected mayor of Buffalo in 1836 — four years after the city was incorporated.
But Buffalo was still barely a city.
“Buffalo was a pioneer settlement of rough hewn houses on the edge of a dense forest when Samuel Wilkeson had a vision of the important part the square was going to play in the upbuilding of the city,” wrote Roy W. Nagle, one of the great collectors of Buffalo’s history from the 1930s through the 1970s.
It was from this house that Wilkeson waged a national and international war against slavery — denouncing human bondage of any kind as un-Christian. He helped in efforts to colonize freed American slaves in Liberia, and the Florida plantation he owned and managed from Buffalo was one of few in the state which didn’t operate using slave labor.
The future of this “Father of Buffalo’s” home was decided when Judge Wilkeson’s granddaughter, who lived in the home until her death in 1903, called for its demolition in her will.
Most of Buffalo’s still-surviving fine old mansions had met with a fate she did not want to befall her lifelong home. Mrs. Wilkeson wouldn’t allow the place to become a boarding house or lodging house.
Shortly thereafter, one of Buffalo’s oldest homes was razed, and Buffalo’s first gas station was built on the spot.
When Buffalo’s current city hall was built in 1929, designers lined up the building’s pillars with those of the Wilkeson House.
Torn-Down Tuesday: Howard Johnson’s on Delaware at North
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The subject of the photo is clearly the women marching in a World War II era Memorial Day parade, but happily captured along with the ladies paying homage to our nation’s war dead is Buffalo’s original Howard Johnson’s Restaurant.
Generations of Americans remember the homestyle dinners and 28-flavor ice cream selection at the more than 1,000 Howard Johnson’s orange-roofed locations around the country.
Buffalo’s most popular HoJo’s was this one at Delaware and North starting around 1941. The restaurant was a part of the sometimes-strange development of Delaware Avenue. Working class families piled out of wood-paneled, American-made station wagons right across the street from the home of News Publisher and Buffalo aristocrat Edward Butler.
The restaurant was remodeled in 1960, and remained a familiar landmark for the next three decades.
Walgreens purchased what was Buffalo’s last Howard Johnson’s location and built a drug store at the site on Delaware and North in 1994.
Buffalo in the ’80s: Hills at Transit & Main
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Not sure what Buffalonians will have more fun remembering: Hills or gas prices at $1.13.
The shopping plaza known as the Clarence Mall, complete with empty Ames, G&G Fitness and Burlington Coat Factory stores, was bulldozed in 2005 when the name was changed to the Shops at Main/Transit.
Barnes & Noble, Old Country Buffet and Bed, Bath, & Beyond now fill the retail strip between the Eastern Hills Mall and Main Street along Transit.
When the Clarence Mall held its grand opening in 1967, ads called the place “the shopping plaza of superlatives.”
Grant City, the fourteenth store in the W.T. Grant chain, was by far the largest at 135,000 square feet when it opened. The 30,000-square-foot Park Edge grocery store that opened at the plaza was the largest in Western New York, with “the area’s largest dairy case,” measuring 80 feet long with four levels.
Buffalo in 1901: Pioneering woman author captures Buffalo’s feelings about the Pan-Am
By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
“The city which woos and wins a great exposition gets considerably more than it bargained for,” wrote Mary B. Hartt in October, 1901. In the wake of Buffalo’s Pan-Am she saw “rampant commercialism on the one hand, and an awakened civic consciousness on the other.”
Mary Bronson Hartt spent the first half of the 20th century as a trailblazing freelance magazine writer and editor of a handful of women’s magazines and scholarly journals, but her first widely disseminated work were reflections of Buffalo during the time of the Pan-American Exposition.
The 1890 graduate of The Buffalo Seminary captured the flavor of the Pan-Am and the thoughts of Buffalo’s old guard crowd about the event with her detailed and colorful prose. Not only did she graduate from Buffalo Sem, her mother, Mrs. Lucy Lynde Hartt, was principal of the school for 13 years.
They moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1903, but while still living on Park Street in Buffalo, Hartt wrote for several national magazines and Buffalo newspapers about life during the Pan-Am. For the Buffalo Express, she wrote about how to eat well but inexpensively near the Pan-American grounds.
For the Buffalo Courier, she looked at some of the less desirable changes in the city during the exposition, and examined whether or not they might become permanent. She imagined Buffalonians of a previous generation rolling over in the graves as cheap souvenir stands “disgraced with cheap tawdriness and tinsel futilities.”
Neither did she favor the billboards and signs plastered and erected seemingly everywhere, which she called “an epidemic of shameless, flaming signboards, big, and bold, and bad.”
One lasting effect, wrote Hartt, seemed to be the cheapening of Buffalo.
“A little city of quick-lunch kiosks sprang up… soft drink wagons and fruit stands, and shabby booths for the sale of beer and sandwiches and the irrepressible souvenir, filled the whole countryside, obliterating the view of the Exposition. Temporary hotels and perhaps even outside restaurants were a necessary evil. But Bohemian beer gardens were not. The city groaned in spirit as two mighty pavilions of the latter class were run up within a thousand feet of the main gate of the fair. Despite the attraction of beer served among mummied palms, one of these places failed to draw, and it has been whitewashed and relabeled with a more attractive name. The other, orchid-like, lives on air.”
Hartt writes almost mocking the expectations that Buffalo could remain the way it was before the Pan-Am started. “These are the mortifications of the Buffalonians. They are only a part of the trying by-products of the Pan-American. Expositions come high. If you want one you must not only subscribe for stock and buy unlimited tickets for yourself and your family, but you must pay an extortionate rent for your house, an extortionate price for your bread and butter.”
“It hurts their feelings, too, to have the city trolleys filled with outlandish foreign folk, and to have the lips of the best as well as the worst of Buffalonians tainted with select Midway slang. It’s “Have a look!” and “You’ll have to hurry!” from newsboy and golfer alike.
But not everything the exposition brought was bad. “It must not be supposed that the
Exposition by-products are all unfavorable to Buffalo. Her trolley cars run in trains of four. Real crowds surge through her streets. The theatres put on plays to run throughout the summer, instead of for, at most, a single week.”
Buffalo is just about to find herself. Hitherto she has had no adequate idea of what she could do if she tried. The summer has been a complete revelation. Better still, the rich, full life of the past six months, the abundance of music and superb sculpture and splendid architecture and painting; the rush and vigor of a thoroughly thriving town, are going to leave behind them a divine discontent with the old order of things. And that means civic regeneration.”
Mary Bronson Hartt was a staff writer at the Boston Transcript and Chicago Tribune, and then the editor of Museum News. She died in New York City in 1946. Her obituary appeared in The New York Times.