Torn-Down Tuesday: Michigan Avenue Bridge collapsed 60 years ago today

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

It was more of a wipeout than a teardown, the effects of which were being fully realized on this day 60 years ago.

The Michael K. Tewksbury takes out the Michigan Avenue Bridge in 1959.

Gale force winds and rushing waters ripped the grain boat Michael K. Tewksbury from its moorings at the Standard Elevator, and sent it pilot-less down the Buffalo River, smashing into and destroying the Michigan Avenue Bridge, just before midnight on Jan. 21, 1959.

The Michigan Avenue Bridge collapsed in 1959.

After hitting a grain elevator straight on, the 515-foot Tewksbury then hit the bridge broadside, wiping out one of the 200-foot towers.

Those who heard the gnashing and groaning of the steel say they’ll never forget it.

“A sickening, scratching crash like an auto accident magnified a million times,” said an engineer who heard the crash from the nearby fireboat.

It took workmen and tugboat crews 10 days to get the ship free.

A trial to determine fault stretched on even longer, as the city blamed the owners of the Tewksbury and another ship, the Shiras, for not having been properly moored. Ship owners, meanwhile, blamed the city for allowing ice floes to jam up the river and not raising the bridge to avoid the accident.

By 1961, $30 million of claims had piled up in relation to the incident.

Ultimately, a judge decided the other ship was improperly moored, came loose, and hit the Tewksbury, and also that the city should have lifted the bridge to avoid the crash. Midland Steamship Co., owners of the Tewksbury, were held harmless.

A replacement bridge was built in 1960 at a cost of $2.5 million. After being repaired and returned to seaworthy condition in Buffalo Harbor, the Tewksbury was eventually sold for scrap in 1962.

The full story of that night and the years that followed trying to figure out what happened is told with photos, excerpts from depositions, and eyewitness accounts by Old First Ward historian Gene Overdorf at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tewksbury Lodge at 249 Ohio St. The admission is $10.

The Edward M. Cotter, at left, was spared when the Michigan Avenue Bridge collapsed in 1959.

Aside from showing the Michigan Avenue Bridge wrapped around the Tewksbury, and the near-miss for the Edward M. Cotter just to the left, it also shows the dramatic changes to the landscape of the First Ward over the last six decades.

In both images, the most recognizable landmark is the Swannie House.

The image below is from Google Earth.

Buffalo in 1905: Shopping for a Christmas turkey

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

The turkey selection was grand at the Elk Street Market a few days before Christmas in 1905.

“Turkeys are plentiful but rather high in price,” reported The Buffalo Times.

The Shriners were there 113 years ago, loading up their automobiles to help make Christmas dinner better for more than 1,000 families.

At the time, the Elk Street Market was “the largest fruit and garden truck market in the United States.” The traffic in commodities sold rivaled any similar market on the continent.

The Elk Street Market stood on a site that is now mostly covered by the Buffalo Creek Casino.

The part of Elk Street where the market stood is now South Park Avenue. Elk Street once ran from Seneca Street almost to the foot of Main Street. In her blog about Buffalo Streets, Angela Keppel writes that in 1939, South Buffalo businessmen thought it would be a good idea to have a street that runs from South Buffalo to downtown. Elk Street was one of five streets that was carved up to create South Park Avenue.

The same photo essay shows Christmas dinner in the jail, with carolers entertaining from above, and children at the West Side’s School 3 decorating a Christmas tree.

The First Ward’s Niagara Elevator

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

In the lower right corner of our 1880 map, at the corner of Chicago and Ohio streets, is the Niagara Elevator and malt house.

Niagara Malt House Ohio & Chicago Sts

It was built in 1868 by the Niagara Elevating Co., and expanded over the course of the next 40 years. In 1880, ground was broken on the Niagara “B” elevator, which was called “the most perfect grain elevator in the world” by the Buffalo Commercial when it opened the following year.

Niagara Elevator, 1880

“From present appearances, there will be a revolution in the process of handling grain,” reported the Commercial.

The new elevator had the ability to elevate 200,000 bushels of grain from the hulls of ships every 24 hours, and transfer into boats more than that amount. Tracks connecting to both the Erie and New York Central lines carry cars that could be filled four at a time.

No matter the transfer speed, grain storage was a very dangerous and combustible business—and like many, if not most elevators of the era, the Niagara Elevator was the scene of several fires and explosions, including one fast-moving fire that had the recipe for disaster, but fire tug William S. Grattan was there to knock down the flames immediately.

The Grattan was rechristened the Edward M. Cotter and remains a fixture in the Buffalo River in the shadow of the General Mills plant to this day.

Even without large scale incidents, accidents were frequent and gory. The June 1, 1901, edition of The Buffalo Evening News shared front-page stories about the goings-on at the Pan American Exposition, and announced the regular nightly illumination of buildings would start at 8:15 and the lights would stay on until the grounds closed. It was feared that sudden dimming of the lights might cause panic among the more timid attendees.

Buffalo Evening News, 1901

Next to that article on the front page was the story of James Lynch, the scooper whose “life was crushed out in an instant,” “caught in the leg of the Niagara Elevator and horribly mangled.”

“Scooper James Lynch was walking though Niagara Elevator B between 11 o’clock and noon, full of health and vigor. Five minutes later, he was snatched by a conveyor belt and carried upward 135 feet through an elevator leg, then he was dropped, crushed, bleeding and lifeless, into a big grain hopper.”

The elevator was the site of a “fierce riot” that made national headlines in 1903.

A group of 200 non-union Italian immigrant workers from the Buffalo Union Furnace Co. were walking past the Niagara Elevator, when one of the unionized grain scoopers yelled out, “Scab!”

What happened next, according to The Buffalo Courier, “Bullets flying in all directions, knives, stilettos, cleavers, and weapons very much in evidence, while people in the neighborhood were hunting for cover.”

A melee broke out, and “45 Italians were arrested for fighting with whites,” according to the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle report. Most were allowed to go on a suspended sentence, but one man was sent to jail for 90 days for possessing a revolver – from which he squeezed off a few rounds during the incident. Another man was held for carrying a dangerous knife. “A stiletto, almost two feet long, more appropriately called a sword,” according to another sensationalized newspaper account.

Today, the site where the Niagara once stood is a part of the new building and revitalization of the Old First Ward along the Buffalo River.

Buffalo in the ’60s: Ohio Street was your Skyway alternate route

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

If you follow the posted detours for the construction on the Skyway, you’re routed along Ohio Street.

The view from this spot looked different when this photo was taken in 1957.

From the Ohio Street lift bridge. The Harbor Inn, torn down in 2003, was in the brick building to the right.

Here is another shot, from just before the bridge in 1962. The photo shows the large sign which marked the Huron Cement Company along the Buffalo River.

A view of Ohio Street in 1962.

If Ohio Street looked more filled in then, the area surrounding the Skyway looked less filled in when redecking work was done in 1975.

The Skyway was redecked in 1975.

A closer look at Buffalo’s First Ward

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

As “The Old First Ward” the way it once was becomes a more distant memory, “the Ward” becomes more of a caricature of itself in the minds of many.

The St. Patrick’s Day parade, at what was then Elk and Louisiana, and today is South Park and Louisiana, 1925.

If all you know about the First Ward is shamrocks, taverns, and parades, here’s a bit more on the institutions that made up life there.

Elk Street Market:

In 1904, the Elk Street Market was “the largest fruit and garden truck market in the United States.” The traffic in commodities sold rivaled any similar market on the continent. German, Italian, and Irish traditions played out all over the four-block long market that ran parallel to Michigan Street, in an area now largely taken up by the Buffalo Creek Casino. This portion of Elk Street is now South Park Avenue.

Read More: Torn-Down Tuesday: The Elk Street Market

Elk & Louisiana:

Elk & Louisiana

The intersection of Elk and Louisiana streets was the crossroads of the Old First Ward. A block or two in either direction were canals and the homes of scoopers teeming with the Irish immigrants who were the foundation of Buffalo’s milling and grain industry. Today, it’s the corner of South Park Avenue and Louisiana Street– the home of a gas station and a Family Dollar in front of you from this spot and the Commodore Perry Housing Complex at your left.

Read More: Torn-Down Tuesday: South Park and Louisiana, 1890

St. Brigid’s Church:

St Brigid’s

St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church was the center of the Irish immigrant community in Buffalo’s First Ward neighborhood for more than a century. More than just the home of spiritual life, St. Brigid’s — and specifically St. Brigid’s Hall — was a center for union meetings, political rallies, parties, sporting events and theatrical performances. Through the 1920s, it was also the place where thousands came together to organize the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade through the streets of the Ward.

READ MORE: Torn-down Tuesday: St. Brigid’s Hall in the First Ward

The Hamburg Canal:

The Hamburg Canal

Before they were even finished digging the Hamburg Canal, in 1849, the standing, fetid water in the half-dug ditch was blamed in part for a growing cholera crisis in what we now call the First Ward and Canalside areas. The largest part of the Hamburg Canal was finally put out of its misery when the Lehigh Valley Railroad built Buffalo’s glowing new passenger terminal on a filled-in portion of it in 1916.

READ MORE: Torn-Down Tuesday: The fetid, festering Hamburg Canal

 

Torn-Down Tuesday: The Elk Street Market

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Time and circumstance has nearly eliminated knowledge and memory of one of the city’s great institutions.

West Market Street, Elk Street Market. Buffalo Stories archives

In 1904, the Elk Street Market was “the largest fruit and garden truck market in the United States.” The traffic in commodities sold rivaled any similar market on the continent.

Buffalo Stories archives

The market’s size and success was attributed to so many of Buffalo’s immigrants holding onto centuries-old ways and their “adherence to village customs.” German, Italian, and Irish traditions played out all over the four-block long market that ran parallel to Michigan Street, in an area now largely taken up by the Buffalo Creek Casino.

Trying to understand where the market was offers up several red herrings. The first is the name. The market is nowhere near today’s Elk Street.

The part of Elk Street where the market stood is now South Park Avenue. Elk Street once ran from Seneca Street almost to the foot of Main Street. In her blog about Buffalo Streets, Angela Keppel writes that in 1939, South Buffalo businessmen thought it would be a good idea to have a street that runs from South Buffalo to downtown. Elk Street was one of five streets that was carved up to create South Park Avenue.

Buffalo Stories archives

Another red herring is the Elk Street Terminal. Famous now as one of Buffalo’s early reuse condominium projects, it was built at the northern tip of the market and used for the loading and unloading of trucks and trains. The actual market stretched several blocks into the First Ward from the back door of the terminal.

Buffalo Stories archives

It’s actually a double red herring because not only was the terminal a small part of the market away from most of the buying and selling the market was famous for, it’s actually several blocks away from where Elk Street was. It was named after the market (which no longer exists) which was named after the street (which no longer exists.)

Buffalo Stories archives

Thousands of wagons laden with fruit and vegetables paid 15¢ or 25¢ for a spot on the market or took their wares to the terminal to be loaded on trains to be sold around the country. The farmers themselves came from as far as Orchard Park or further south, or as far north as Clarence — but rules prevented Niagara County growers from selling at the market.

During the height of the fruit season, 10,000 bushels were sold a day.

Buffalo Stories archives

The main building also was home to a meat and poultry market, and the fish market was the city’s busiest.

Michigan Avenue just outside the Elk Street Market. Buffalo Stories archives

A fire in the late 1920s and then railroad maneuvering to have most of the larger business of the Elk Terminal moved to the Clinton Bailey Market mostly spelled the end of the Elk Street Market, which continued to hang on as a farmers market through the 1930s.

These views show a 1906 and 2016 view near what is now South Park and Michigan avenues.

Buffalo Stories archives

Torn-Down Tuesday: Buffalo’s public bath houses

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Buffalo’s position as one of America’s largest and most sophisticated cities was strikingly on display with the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. The City of Light. Advanced transportation. The most modern manufacturing ideas put into practice. Many of the wonders of the Industrial Revolution were on display for the world to take in and enjoy in Buffalo.

Sitting around a spittoon, men and boys wait for their turn for a free bath. (Buffalo Stories archives)

But behind that picture of a flourishing city was an undeniable underbelly: Thousands of Buffalonians had no running water in their homes or access to bathing facilities.

It was universally acknowledged as a growing problem, but one without a clear solution.

“A great number of Buffalonians do not feel the need of public baths in the summer months,” wrote the Buffalo Courier in 1895, “because there are many much frequented bathing places along the lake and river fronts and along the numerous creeks in Buffalo.”

Buffalo had two public baths in 1895. They were at the foot of S. Michigan Avenue, along the lakeshore close to the General Mills complex, and at the foot of Porter Avenue, near the Buffalo Yacht Club.
Buffalo had two public baths in 1895. They were at the foot of S. Michigan Avenue, along the lakeshore close to the General Mills complex, and at the foot of Porter Avenue, near the Buffalo Yacht Club.

Buffalo, it was written, didn’t need bathing facilities, because people bathed in lakes, rivers, and creeks.

A day at the beach was more than just a day of sunshine and relaxation—it was a matter of hygiene. Resort beaches south of the city, places like Wanakah, Idlewood and Bennett Beach, were appropriate for women and children, but men and older boys would bathe wherever they could.

The foot of Court and Georgia streets — which once led from the West Side to the banks of Lake Erie — were popular spots, as were Squaw Island and the foot of Ferry Street.

One man was arrested trying to wash up in the Johnson Park fountain. “The Polish Boys,” wrote The Courier, frequented a bathing hole along Buffalo Creek near South Ogden and the railroad bridge of the Jammerthal area— now the northern East Side of Buffalo. One still-open quarrying area is along Amherst Street as it approaches Bailey Avenue coming from Main Street.

In 1895, Buffalo’s two public baths—one at the foot of S. Michigan Avenue, one at the foot of Porter Avenue – were “small box-like arrangements,” more or less “dilapidated, dirty, and disgraceful” sheds.

Street urchins and pickpockets would use the places, it was said, but no respectable boy or man would be seen there—where a nickel would provide use of a locker and a pair of “bathing pants.”

“Buffalo is deplorably, disgracefully deficient in public baths,” wrote the Courier. Especially during winter months, when bathing alternatives were needed, working men couldn’t afford the luxury of the widely available $1 Turkish baths.

City leaders took the health crisis and turned it into one of the nation’s first public welfare programs.

Men and boys wait for their turn in Buffalos public bath, 1901. (Buffalo Stories archives)
Men and boys wait for their turn in Buffalo’s public bath, 1901. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Buffalo Health Commissioner Wende called the bath houses in two of Buffalo’s most crowded tenement areas a long time in coming.

“While the luxury and benefit of public baths have reached their highest stage in Europe, it remained for Buffalo, an American city, in competing for the supremacy in the realization of the conditions desired by a cultured public, to establish a bath where the indigent, the fatigued, and the unclean could find shelter and care without money and without price.”

In 1897, a brick structure was built on the Terrace as a sanitary bathing facility for the men of Buffalo, particularly the mostly Irish immigrants of the First Ward and the Italian immigrants of The Hooks.

Soap and towels were provided to bathers free of charge. The facility was the first free, open bath house anywhere in the country, and put Buffalo on the cutting edge of health and sanitation.

Buffalos Public Bath House Number 1, was located on the southern tip of The Terrace playground. The building was in the approximate area of Channel 7s studios today. (Buffalo Stories archives)
Buffalo’s Public Bath House No. 1 was located on the southern tip of the Terrace playground. The building was in the approximate area of Channel 7’s studios today. (Buffalo Stories archives)

In 1901, a second public bath house was built on Buffalo’s East Side at Woltz Avenue and Stanislaus Street.

Buffalos Public Bath House Number 2 at Woltz Avenue and Stanislaus Street. (Buffalo Stories archives)
Buffalo’s Public Bath House No. 2 at Woltz Avenue and Stanislaus Street. (Buffalo Stories archives)

This larger building had separate bathing facilities and waiting rooms for both men and women. While there were bathtubs for women and infants, men were offered showers. The idea of showering was brand new — so new, in fact, that a 1901 article in The Buffalo Express explained how a shower works.

“The bather stands erect in the shower, and the water falls down upon him. There is a depression in the floor, with perforations which carry away the water that has fallen.”

The interior of the shower area had stalls separated by wrought iron. Water was heated to approximately 100 degrees, and bathers were allowed 20 minutes in the showering and adjoining dressing rooms.

The buildings’ rules were written on the walls in English, Polish, Italian and German. They read:

  1. Smoking prohibited
  2. No swearing or obscene language
  3. No intoxicated person allowed in the building
  4. Walls, furniture, and property must not be defaced or injured
  5. Soiled clothing must be taken away by the bather
  6. Towels must be returned to the keeper or matron
  7. No bather may occupy an apartment longer than 20 minutes

There were also laundry facilities for underclothes to help further improve sanitation.

Dr. Wende said the free services, with more than 394,000 baths taken in the first four years, cost Buffalo taxpayers 3 cents per person per year, with most of that cost going toward the purchase of soap.

Well into the 1950s, these two bath houses, along with two more at Grant and Amherst and 249 William St., remained in demand providing as many as a million baths a year.

One slight modification was made as time went on — a new rule prevented singing in the showers.

“If we let people sing in our 52 showers,” said the keeper of Bath House No. 2 Stanley Molik, “we’d be in trouble for disturbing the peace of the neighborhood.

Torn-Down Tuesday: South Park and Louisiana, 1890

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Standing in this spot today, you get a good view of a gas station and a Family Dollar in front of you and the Commodore Perry Housing Complex at your left. Today, it’s the corner of South Park Avenue and Louisiana Street.

Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Stories archives

In 1890, South Park had not yet been built. Parts of the street now called “South Park Avenue” were then known as Triangle, Abbott and Elk, among others.

This Elk and Louisiana streets intersection was the crossroads of the Old First Ward. A block or two in either direction were canals and the homes of scoopers teeming with the Irish immigrants who were the foundation of Buffalo’s milling and grain industry.

the St. Patrick’s Day parade at the same Elk and Louisiana intersection, in 1925. Buffalo Stories archives
the St. Patrick’s Day parade at the same Elk and Louisiana intersection, in 1925. (Buffalo Stories archives)

While nothing but the streetscape remains today, some of the stories remain.

While half the storefront was replaced by the Marine Trust Company by 1925, the name Charles Lamy is clearly visible in the 1890 photo.

Lamy was a grocer, saloon keeper and state senator. Born in Eden, he opened a small shop at 305 Elk as a teenager in 1873 and stayed in business until his death in 1929.

He was instrumental in helping the people of the First Ward find a unified political voice. Among his accomplishments was to help shatter the “saloon boss” control of the livelihoods of Buffalo’s grain scoopers. Into the first decade of the 1900s,  owners of lake shipping concerns would turn over the wages of scoopers to saloon owners who would make sure the men’s bar bills were paid before there’d be any money left for their families to eat.

Lamy was one of eight trusted men elected by scoopers to speak on their behalf to the shipping companies in Detroit. He’s buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery.

Buffalo in the 1890s: Polish and Italian freight workers clash

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Today, it’s one of Buffalo’s newest waterfront spaces—RiverFest Park– nestled between Ohio Street and the Buffalo River, just across the water from Buffalo RiverWorks and the Labatt grain silos.

The Buffalo Evening News, May 26, 1899

The Buffalo Evening News, May 26, 1899

At the tail end of the 19th century,  Buffalo’s waterfront was rough and tumble. On this day in particular, it was the place where two immigrant groups clashed and “a race riot looked imminent.”

The unionized mostly Polish freight handlers at the New York Central Freight House on Ohio Street had joined the unionized mostly Irish grain shovelers in striking for better working conditions and in protest of contract abuses.

Cincinnati-Street-from-LOC

When the dock-working Poles came back to work, many were displeased to be working alongside mostly Italian non-union men. Management promised to dismiss the Italians, but when 150 showed up ready for work the next day, “within five minutes, a good sized riot was in progress.”

How the fight started seemed to be in question—The News’ account laid the blame at some of the 200 Poles who began accosting the Italians and calling them scabs. The Courier said the Italians may have started it when one of them threw an old tomato can into the group of Poles.

“Knives and revolvers were flourished,” reported The News, “and fists were freely used.”

Witnesses heard as many as 25 gunshots—one Polish man was shot in the back. An Italian man was slashed in the face. Five were arrested and charged with rioting.

A generational satisfaction in the new Buffalo 

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – Just driving where the roads took me, I wound up in the First Ward today, driving down the stunning new Ohio Street and looking across the dirt and weeds to the Chicago Street lot which was home to long gone ancestors.

map

My 3rd great grandfather, Miles Norton, was an Irish immigrant grain worker who died in the family flat over 64 Chicago Street when he was 45 years old in 1883.

1882 City Directory
1882 City Directory

The address is a shaggy looking vacant lot right now, but over looks all that is new and exciting in Buffalo.

As Miles and his big Irish family lived a pretty impoverished Old First Ward existence, it’s easy to imagine them looking out their back window at the stinking and dirty Buffalo River… And thinking of it as their lifeline and livelihood, as the means for a life better than the one left behind on the old sod of Eire.

In 1883, living above 64 Chicago Street was pretty much the end of the line. It was likely better than what was left in the old country, but the worst of Buffalo. Filth and poverty and hunger.

An 1893 Buffalo Courier story calls 64 Chicago a tenement.
An 1893 Buffalo Courier story calls 64 Chicago a tenement.

For the last half century, the view from that spot has showcased rotting industry and wasted waterfront… And was a view many could point to as ground zero for hopelessness and the slow death of Buffalo.

I wish ol’Miles could see that view now… And understand the newness and feeling of hearts-overflowing in the rebirth of the grounds which are forever stained with the sweat and blood of him and so many hundreds of thousands like him through the decades.

Looking at empty Chicago Street lot where Miles Norton's home once stood, and the view from the water just across Ohio Street.
Looking at empty Chicago Street lot where Miles Norton’s home once stood, and the view from the water just across Ohio Street.

As I stood in those weeds today at the corner of Chicago and Mackinaw, my soul glowed with happiness for my ancestors– that their toil won’t be forgotten and my descendants– that they will be able to live in and enjoy a rejuvenated and wonderful Buffalo.

Our future is built on our past. Our future honors our past.