Buffalo in the 50s: Linde safeguards Buffalo’s food (while damaging the environment)

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The Linde Air Products Company of Tonawanda boasted in a News ad 65 years ago this week that its production of pure nitrogen helped create a more healthy way to package foods to last longer.

Today, Tonawandans who think of Linde are more likely to think of the lasting effects the Manhattan Project work done there. The federal government spent decades and millions of dollars to remediate the radiological waste left behind from uranium processing done there in the 1940s.

Buffalo in the 50s: The Chicken Shoppes’ ‘Miss Slick Chic’ named at Crystal Beach

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Aside from offering “fresh-killed poultry” from 15 city storefronts in 1950, the Chicken Shoppes was also in the beauty business.

Barbara Fabing of Lafayette Avenue was named Miss Slick Chic 1950 in an event at the Crystal Beach Ball Room. The photo shows her receiving a trophy from Chicken Shoppes owner Lewis Bronstein.

Buffalo in the 50s: The ‘new’ Connecticut Street opens with a carnival and parade

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Repaved and widened, Connecticut Street was poised to become a center of Buffalo’s Italian neighborhood. It later hosted Buffalo’s Italian Festival in the ’70s and ’80s before that event moved to Hertel Avenue in 1988.

Buffalo in the 50s: ‘Communist-sponsored traitors’ warned to stay clear of First Ward

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Residents of the Perry Projects organized a rally and protest at St. Brigid’s School to “alert people to the methods used by the Communists to infiltrate our way of life” after a pro-Communist petition was passed through the area.

Buffalo in the 50s: The ‘hydra-matic,’ ‘futuramic’ Rocket-88 Oldsmobile

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In the 1980s, the jingle reminded us that “This was not your father’s Oldsmobile.”

Assuming those “father’s Oldsmobiles” were being sold in the 1950s, those dads were told a new Olds would make them space-age and future-cool.

No matter how young ad executives tried to make Oldsmobiles seem, for generations, they were generally seen a sensible, comfortable car that a dad or a grandpa would love.

General Motors stopped making Oldsmobiles in 2004. One of the dealerships listed on this ad from 65 years ago this week sold the cars until the bitter end.  The Tunmore family sold Oldsmobiles for 73 years starting in 1931.

Buffalo in the 50s: Western Auto had everything your dad could have wanted

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

With a stunning array of gizmos, tonics, tools and devices, Western Auto had everything a dad, not to mention a boy, could want.

The shelves were lined with items to make your car, camping trip or sporting event far more interesting.

Buffalo in the 50s: W.T. Grant’s 10th location opens in Riverside

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Grants — which was, as the company’s slogan said, “known for values” — opened its 10th “bigger, better” Buffalo-area location 65 years ago today on Tonawanda Street in Riverside.

The national chain of variety stores expanded in Buffalo as the city’s population did and was a fixture in many early strip malls, such as University Plaza and in the retail build-out at Main and Transit. The national chain filed for bankruptcy in 1976.

This Grant’s location is now occupied by the Riverside library branch.

Buffalo in the 50s: The cheap beers Buffalo dads were drinking 65 years ago this week

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Among the beers advertised to the fathers of Buffalo on the pages of The News 65 years ago this week, in August, 1950, were imports from Newark, Detroit, Toronto (by way of Cleveland) and one beer made right here in Buffalo.

Ballantine was a New York City favorite for generations and was a less expensive brand carried into the ’80s at places like Bells.

Goebel beer, brewed in Detroit and available in Western New York into the ’80s, was announcing its new “bantam cans,” allowing your dad to drink 8 ounces at a time.

05 aug 1950 goebel beer

Red Cap Ale and Black Label Beer, both by Carling, were Canadian beers that were being brewed in Cleveland in 1950. They were among the most popular in Buffalo at the time.


Beck’s beer, not to be confused with the present day German import, was brewed by Magnus Beck Brewing in Buffalo from 1855 to 1956.

Buffalo in the 50s: On sale at Edwards downtown– your grandparents’ porch furniture

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

If you spent time on a Buffalo porch or patio anytime from the 1950s through the 1980s, chances are pretty good at least one or two of these summer furniture pieces from Edwards’ downtown store look familiar.

The metal chairs, especially, seemed to last forever. Many still survive in the backs of garages even after being replaced by plastic resin Adirondack chairs.

Buffalo in the 50s: 31,000 housing units added; 5,000 more expected this year

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The City of Buffalo, in particular, faced a housing crisis during World War II when tens of thousands of people came to the city to populate the war production efforts in what was then one of the nation’s top manufacturing cities.

From 1940 to 1950, Buffalo and the nearby suburbs gained 68,000 residents and saw 31,000 new units of housing built.  The analysis of these numbers and others make for an interesting snapshot in Buffalo’s history and show what city fathers were looking at as they built infrastructures to accommodate the 2 million Buffalonians expected to come by 1980.