Buffalo in the 50s: The opening of Thruway Plaza

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

Easily the forerunner of indoor mall shopping in Western New York, the Thruway Plaza opened in 1952, a decade before Buffalo’s first covered mall, the Bouvelard Mall, opened its doors.

Thruway Plaza was enclosed to become Thruway Mall in 1974, but the shopping center fell on hard times when it began losing shoppers and tenants to the Walden Galleria Mall, only a mile away, starting in 1989.

Buffalo’s downtown merchants group branches out to the ‘burbs

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this week, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

The Downtown Retail Merchants Association was a driving force in getting shoppers downtown, making sure they stayed there and making sure they shopped in multiple stores.

In 1978, the group’s name was changed to the Western New York Retail Merchants Association, with the focus changed from keeping shoppers downtown — which was looking more and more like a lost cause in the late ’70s — to making sure that people continued to shop throughout Western New York.

The “Larkin” behind the Larkin District

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this week, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

Except for perhaps attending a concert or food truck Tuesday in the Larkin District, most Buffalonians aren’t aware of the impact that Buffalo’s Larkin Soap Co. had on the national and world economy and the way we all shop.

While many of us remember the Sears catalog, it was John D. Larkin’s company that created many of the processes that became standard in mail-order retail and remain the basis for the systems used by Internet age mail-order retailers to this day.

Remembering Buffalo’s first jeweler, Tanke’s, established 1857

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this week, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

T.C. Tanke was one of Buffalo’s early prominent citizens and was one of the city’s first silversmiths in 1857. Thousands of finely crafted pieces of jewelry and silverware made their way into Western New York homes through the 131 years Tanke’s was in business downtown. The shop closed in 1989.

Buffalo in the 70s: ManTwo men’s (disco!) fashions

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A man looking to look his best at Club 747 or Uncle Sam’s might have shopped at one of the three locations of ManTwo in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

This ad appeared in The News in July, 1980.

It’s probably fair to say any suit purchased at this sale, held 35 years ago this week, would now only come out for once a year for the day after Thanksgiving at the Convention Center, if ever at all.

The elegant evolution of Delaware Avenue shopping

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this week, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper’s starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

While much of Buffalo bought most of what they needed from the large department stores on Main Street — and then later their branch stores in shopping malls and plazas, and then, ultimately, at discount department stores — a certain segment of the city’s population shopped in elegance at the chic, more continental-feeling shops of Delaware Avenue.

Mabel Dahany, the Jenny Shop, Tegler’s and Pitt Petri offered a more sophisticated atmosphere to more sophisticated shoppers.

Buffalo in the 80s: Cassettes on sale at 7 area Gold Circle stores

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Neil Diamond, Air Supply and the Stray Cats were among the artists featured in Gold Circle’s $3.99 cassette sale in July, 1985.

Gold Circle’s seven area stores had all been Twin Fair locations. In 1984, the regional chain was among the first in the nation to install barcode readers in checkout lanes for faster, more accurate transactions.

When Gold Circle was sold off in 1988, several area locations became Hills stores, several others closed.