Torn-Down Tuesday: Statler’s Hotel Buffalo made way for Pilot Field

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Jimmy Griffin’s dream-turned-reality for a downtown ballpark helped spur the rebirth of a Buffalo neighborhood and nearly brought a major league baseball team to Buffalo.

Mayor Griffin throws out the opening pitch at Pilot Field.

It was doing what might have seemed impossible for Buffalo on the face of it. A new, $56 million baseball stadium right in the middle of city that, over the previous decade, had become the butt of national jokes about blizzards, toxic waste and shuttered industry.

“We get screwed by the national media all the time,” said Irv Weinstein at the time. “Johnny Carson and those jerks.”

Mid 1970s, before Pilot Field was built.

But the new ballpark was different. People from all over the country came to look at how Pilot Field was built and how it worked. It helped bring about a renaissance in inner-city pro baseball not only in Buffalo, but around the country – most notably in Baltimore, where the Orioles and the city followed the lead of Buffalo and the Bisons when they built Camden Yards.

Major League Baseball was expanding by two teams, and Rich and the Bisons were players in the conversation up until the teams were eventually awarded to Denver and Tampa.

Big league dreams were never realized, but the opening of Pilot Field in 1988 was one of the early large-scale success stories that became a part of the new Buffalo story that’s still being written.

A 1985 aerial view of the parking lot where the Bisons’ home ballpark would be built in the coming years.

By the time the mid-1980s rolled around and the plans for what would become Pilot Field were well into the pipeline, the spot where Coca-Cola Field now stands was mostly a parking lot.

The most notable building that once stood there was the Hotel Buffalo – which was built by Ellsworth Statler in 1907 and was called the Hotel Statler until the much-larger building we still know as the Statler was opened in 1923.

A 1967 photo of The Hotel Buffalo, which originally opened as the Hotel Statler.

The Hotel Buffalo, on the southeast corner of Washington and Swan streets, was torn down in 1967, and soon thereafter, demolition also began on the other side of Washington Street for the Marine Midland Tower.

Ground was broken on the downtown ballpark in 1986. Since opening in 1988, the field will have its sixth official name when Coca-Cola’s naming rights sponsorship runs out at the end of this baseball season.

After 1967’s demolition of the Hotel Buffalo, before the 1970 construction of the Marine Midland Tower.

Buffalo in the ’80s: When ‘Grab a six-pack’ became our mantra

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

“Stay inside. Grab a six-pack.”

Mayor Jimmy Griffin was serving as acting Streets Commissioner in 1985 when he gave his famous advice, about staying off the roads.

It’s almost difficult to imagine Western New York and especially a Western New York snowfall without the phrase that Jimmy Griffin joked would wind up on his tombstone. But while Buffalonians have likely been drinking their way through snowstorms for as long as there have been people here, we’ve only been “staying inside and grabbing a six-pack” for the 32 years since a blizzard descended on Buffalo in January 1985.

It had been only been eight years since the Blizzard of ’77 and Western New Yorkers were still a little jumpy with memories of being stranded, 12-foot drifts, and people freezing to death in their cars.

Heading into a late January weekend in 1985, forecasters were calling for as much snow as the city had seen since ’77. Ultimately, three feet of snow fell in three days, but the weekend timing was actually perfect. One of the lessons learned in ’77 was to keep people off the roads so you could keep the roads cleared.

Double duty

One would expect the mayor to be out front with snow emergency communications, but during the Blizzard of ’85, Mayor James D. Griffin was  Buffalo’s acting Streets Commissioner, coordinating snow removal efforts from City Hall and the heavy equipment depot at Broadway Barns.

Why? The Common Council had repeatedly rejected the mayor’s nomination of Joseph Scinta as Streets Commissioner. After the fifth rejection, in November 1984, Griffin told Buffalonians to “blame their councilmen when the snow was piling up” on city streets.

When the blizzard hit two months later, Griffin was determined to show Buffalonians what he was doing personally to get the streets cleared. He even rode a few shifts on the plows.  The mayor issued a driving ban and ordered the police to enforce it. But he also encouraged people to stay home and watch the 49ers and Dolphins in the Super Bowl that weekend,  maybe with beverage in hand.

Police enforce a driving ban during the Blizzard of ’85. Buffalo News archives

“Stay inside, grab a six-pack, and watch a good football game,” Mayor Griffin was caught saying on a Channel 7 camera. “Have a six-pack handy so you can enjoy yourself. Don’t take this too seriously.”

The consensus was that most Buffalonians liked seeing Don Shula, Dan Marino and the Dolphins beat up in the Super Bowl, and most liked the job Griffin did in beating back the Blizzard of ’85. The News later gave Griffin high marks for his handling of the blizzard and its aftermath, saying he did “a good job” acting as his own commissioner.

1985 was a mayoral election year, and the Blizzard of ’85 was a central campaign issue. Common Council President and primary opponent George Arthur questioned the city’s preparedness and overall plan for snow fighting.

“When you get 45 inches of snow, I challenge anyone to come up with a plan that works,” said Griffin.

Others attacked the six-pack advice as “unbecoming a mayor.” Griffin would have none of it.

As quoted by Brian Meyer and David Breslawski in their 1985 book “The World According to Griffin,” the mayor hammered back with, “I’m proud of the statement. You get a blizzard here in Buffalo, you have to get off the street. I’ll probably use it again. I don’t see anything wrong with it. It was a humorous statement.”

Griffin was elected to a third term in 1985 and a fourth in 1989.

Did we grab six packs?

But did people heed Mayor Griffin’s advice, that first time it was suggested Western New York grab some beers and relax?

Delaware Avenue, The Blizzard of 1985. Buffalo News archives

In the days following the Blizzard of 1985, The News checked in with a handful of stores to see how they fared.

The Tops Market at 2226 Delaware Ave. – today the spot is Big Lots— and the 7-Eleven on Sheridan Drive—now Romeo & Juliet’s Bakery & Café—reported big runs on junk food and beer as Western New Yorkers apparently dutifully followed the mayor’s advice.

Buffalo in the ’70s: The first ‘World’s Largest Disco’

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In the run-up to what was being billed as “The World’s Largest Disco — 64,000 square feet,” one organizer promised the dance party in Buffalo’s new convention center would be remembered as “the Woodstock of disco.”

Mayor James D. Griffin helps promote the 1979 quest for a world record at the Buffalo Convention Center in 1979. Record Theatre owner Lenny Silver is among the lookers on. Buffalo Stories archives
Mayor James D. Griffin helps promote the 1979 quest for a world record at the Buffalo Convention Center in 1979. Record Theatre owner Lenny Silver is among the lookers on. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Downtown boomed with a 100-speaker, 30,000-watt sound system in “holophonic three-dimensional sound,” and a $25,000 light show designed and installed by Litelab — the Angola company famous for creating the bar scene lighting in disco-era classic film “Saturday Night Fever” starring John Travolta.

As “Captain Disco,” longtime Buffalo nightclub DJ Charles Anzalone was one of the people keeping the dance floor moving. His memories of the night were stark more than a decade later and included “huge dancing disco trains 1,000 people long, snaking through the crowd … confetti cannons going off, and people’s drinks getting covered with confetti … glittery platforms and tacky suits from Man Two or Pantastik.”

Aside from balloons dropping from the rafters and cannons firing blizzards of confetti, that 1979 show also included a performance from Queen of Disco Gloria Gaynor — who was celebrating her birthday that night.

In keeping with the “world’s largest” theme, the “I Will Survive” singer was presented with a huge birthday cake decorated with water fountains, fresh flowers and sparklers, created by Raymond Tutton of Richard Rays Restaurant on Washington Street.

The crowd was into the music at the Worlds Largest Disco at the Buffalo Convention Center in 1979.
The crowd was into the music at the Worlds Largest Disco at the Buffalo Convention Center in 1979.

The cake and flowers were wheeled out on stage by a group of producers and Convention Center employees that included Mark J.F. Schroeder — the current comptroller of the City of Buffalo.

In 1994, disco returned to the Convention Center when a new promoter decided to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the original event. Airline seats from Club 747, signs from the Playboy Club and Mulligan’s Cafe, and the infamous “Freddy’s Special” wheel from Cassidy’s bar all added to the nostalgic look back at Buffalo’s late ’70s dance club scene.

Over the last two decades, “The World’s Largest Disco” has become one of Buffalo’s biggest parties of the year, with tickets for the week-of-Thanksgiving event going on sale in August. While the costumes and the scene at this week’s “disco” would almost certainly be foreign and confusing to someone transported in from that first event, the one thing that remains the same is the music, and at least a few people getting on the dance floor to “turn the beat around.”

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.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

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.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

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.

The 1977 city directory shows all of the single family dwellings remaining on Washington and Ellicott Streets-- both now in the footprint of The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus-- as vacant or as lodging operated by Roswell Park.  The area that was as recently as the 1950s a thriving residential area had quickly become nearly all industrial  and offices.

The 1977 city directory shows all of the single family dwellings remaining on Washington and Ellicott Streets– both now in the footprint of The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus– as vacant or as lodging operated by Roswell Park. The area that was as recently as the 1950s a thriving residential area had quickly become nearly all industrial and offices.

Just west of those houses, stands the Roosevelt Apartments. The exterior has been rehabilitated and the Bells Market has long since closed.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

jfk-nf-28sep60216

A few blocks away at Ellicott and Virginia survives Ulrich’s, Buffalo’s oldest continuously operated tavern.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo in the ’40s: the Ford Buffalo Assembly Plant

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In the wake of World War II, there was a nearly five-year period where no American passenger cars were being built. As the war effort gave way to renewed consumerism, Buffalo’s Ford Assembly Plant saw its first postwar car roll off the line in September 1946.

Buffalo News acrhives

Buffalo News archives

The plant was built on Fuhrmann Boulevard in 1930 to replace Ford’s facility on Main Street in Buffalo. Six hundred thousand Model T Fords were built in the building known now as the Tri-Main Center and shipped off on the adjacent New York Central Beltline railway.

Ford Plant, 1920. Now the Tri-Main Building. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Ford Plant, 1920. Now the Tri-Main Building. (Buffalo Stories archives)

About 1,400 workers lost their jobs when Ford closed the Buffalo Assembly Plant in 1958. It was replaced by a new facility in Lorain, Ohio.

Ford’s nearby stamping plant remains in operation to this day, having turned out body parts for many different cars through the years, including the then-new Ford Escort, shown here in 1980 with Mayor James D. Griffin behind the wheel.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Torn-Down Tuesday: ‘Green Lightning’ sculpture – an amplified hoax?

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Now it’s generally accepted that the neon sculpture “Green Lightning” by Billie Lawless was “pubic art as public art,” although the artist has maintained from the very beginning that “people’s interpretation (of neon panels depicting what most people say look like dancing cartoon penises) is up to them.”

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Billie Lawless shows a scale model of Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

Mayor Griffin famously called the sculpture obscene, and ordered it dismantled. Lawless climbed atop the piece to stop the demolition. One judge ordered that the takedown should not continue, and rebuked the mayor. Another judge ruled in favor of Lawless in a lawsuit against Griffin and the city, but awarded no damages. “Green Lightning” was displayed elsewhere with no public outcry.

That’s the two paragraph version of a story that made for great newspaper copy and TV news live reports for more than a decade, leaving out many twists and turns in the drama.

Looking back at the story and reading the daily news surrounding it as it unfolded, to dispute the notion that artist Billie Lawless pulled a hoax on city and art officials is no more in question than whether those neon sculptures are “dancing dog bones” or male sex organs. At the same time, there also are few who stood by Mayor Griffin’s decision to remove the artwork from city property in the manner he did.

Here are highlights in the “Green Lightning” saga as they unfolded in the pages of The News.

Nov. 15, 1984: A small story ran on page B-13 announcing that a sculpture was to be dedicated in the Elm-Oak arterial that afternoon.

lawless-billie068

Nov. 16, 1984: Mayor Griffin orders “Green Lightning” removed. Arts Commission Chairman Sam Magavern said he saw nothing pornographic or questionable about the piece, but said, “If people see something in it that’s wrong, we have to change it.”

Police on the scene to direct traffic during the unveiling the night before were the first to officially raise questions. In a report to his superiors, a lieutenant from the Michigan Street Station wrote, “To my shock, I did not observe a multicolor artwork, but four neon objects anatomically resembling male genitals.” His report continued that traffic came to a crawl around the sculpture and there were several calls to the Michigan Street Station.

The artist Lawless, son of the former Common Council President William Lawless, said the images were based on graffiti that adorned a Bailey Avenue building for years and was deemed “harmless” by all who viewed it. He vehemently denied that any of the figures should be viewed as a sex organ.

“It can be viewed as other objects as well,” Lawless told reporters, with dancing dog bones famously mentioned as one seemingly plausible, but entirely dubious possibility.

David More, Executive Director of the Arts Commission, said, “There is a general consensus that the model actually approved didn’t fully indicate the suggestive nature of the piece now installed.” He went on to say, however, the public perception of the piece may have been shaded by the television coverage of the drama.

Nov. 17, 1984: Lawless stands atop his sculpture as city crews work to dismantle it. In a negotiation with police, the artist agreed to pull the plug on the neon until a judge could hear the case. Members of the Buffalo Police Salacious Literature Unit were under orders to arrest Lawless should he have tried to relight the sculpture.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

“People’s interpretation is up to them. Perhaps it has something to do with their minds,” Lawless said.

Magavern reiterated that he saw nothing wrong with the piece, but still asked Lawless to consider changing some of the panels. Lawless said he’d consider.

Nov. 20, 1984: Saying Lawless pulled “a giant hoax,” officials provided a tape recording of an Oct. 13, 1983 Urban Renewal Agency meeting, where Lawless described the neon in his work as showing an “abstracted dancing figure representing life.”

lawless-billie069

Lawless attorney Michael Brown snapped back saying, “everybody knew what that thing was,” although when asked what he thought it was, said, “I have not seen it lit up.”

Nov. 21, 1984: With a 6-1 vote of the Urban Renewal Agency, Walt’s Tree Service, a city contractor, began taking down the four panels of the sculpture containing the controversial neon elements.

A city contractor dismantles Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

A city contractor dismantles Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

The work began after 5 p.m., but Lawless was tipped off — and was given a temporary injunction by State Supreme Justice Vincent Doyle. The court order arrived after two panels had already been taken down.

Lawless says he’ll “definitely pursue legal action” against the city for damage to “Green Lightning.” “They cut it with torches and just started to dismantle it,” Lawless told reporters.

“I don’t know if Walt is a specialist in dismantling art, but they severed it as if it was a limb off a tree,” said Lawless.

David More, the Executive Director of the Arts Commission, handed in his resignation over the debacle.

“Billie Lawless has perpetrated a hoax on the city,” More said.

Nov. 22, 1984: The News was in contact with several neon contractors who refused to bend the tubing for Lawless as he put together his sculpture.

“There is no doubt Billie knew what it was,” said Larry Woods of Neon Graphics in Clarence, who declined the job when offered. “I accused him of trying to pull something off. I never thought he’d get this far with it.”

“He said they were dancing dog bones,” reported the owner of Wilcox Bros. Sign Company, “but I’ve never seen a dog biscuit that looked like that.”

The neon elements were crafted in Albany, because none of the shops in Buffalo would do the work.

Nov. 23, 1984: Another controversial Western New York sculptor, Larry Griffis, voiced his outrage in an interview with News reporter Michael Beebe.

“To cut it down, what the hell kind of mayor do we have? What kind of city do we have?”

Griffis says it was pretty clear to him what the piece would show.

“I saw it in the shop. I thought it was just as explicit in small scale as it is now. One problem might be the kinetic (moving) portion of the fourth panel. That makes it so explicit.”

Nov. 24, 1984: The Buffalo News Editorial Board writes, “Mayor Griffin was entirely correct in objecting to the ‘Green Lightning’ sculpture in Downtown Buffalo, but he drew a deserved rebuke from State Supreme Court Justice Vincent E. Doyle for not seeking court approval before ordering the work dismantled.”

Nov. 27, 1984: Changing his earlier stance that he saw “nothing wrong with the piece,” Buffalo Art Commission Chairman Samuel Magavern signed a letter to funders calling the work “pornographic and vulgar.” Magavern also credited Mayor Griffin’s having acted “promptly and effectively” to block the display. He also told patrons that he felt duped. “We feel badly that he used us.”

Several patrons reacted to the letter with concerns that Lawless, having “pulled one over” on the city, should leave him feeling ashamed of himself “because he is really hurting other artists who want to get help from the city.”

Not all reaction was negative. One sponsor called it “stimulating, refreshing and sophisticated.”

Dec. 5, 1984: An op-ed written by Lawless and partner Kathie Simonds describes the artist’s inspiration for the figure in question. He says it was graffiti — spray paint on an imitation brick wall on Bailey Avenue, and that it had been there for years.

Saying the entirety of “Green Lightning” had not yet been explored, Lawless and Simonds say, “Ironically, the sculpture has fallen victim to its own controversy.”

Explaining what they envisioned the piece to mean, Lawless wrote, in part, that is was “burlesquing male dominance and myths attendant to male dominance.”

Dec. 11, 1984: After some criticism in the community for not printing photos showing the controversial elements of “Green Lightning,” News Editor Murray Light responds in his “Your Newspaper” column by saying, in part, “The News did not print the pictures of the illuminated neon panels because this paper does not think they should be seen in a family newspaper or should have been displayed publicly.”

Feb. 8, 1985: The city-owned plot where what’s left of “Green Lighting” still stands, was noted as a spot where city crews had been dumping snow that had piled up during the Blizzard of ’85.

May, 1985: Lawless says the “Green Lightning” controversy hasn’t hurt him financially, but most of his sales are in places like Philadelphia and Boston. “Buffalo’s shortage of yuppies is the problem,” Lawless told reporter Jane Kwiatkowski, “because young people in Buffalo just don’t buy art as they do elsewhere.”

One of the 11 lightning bolts that were part of the sculpture had gone missing, but was found in a South Buffalo backyard. The 8-foot high, 500-pound sculptural element had been swiped as a prank.

Lawless works to fix damage done to Green Lightning. (Buffalo News archives)

Lawless works to fix damage done to “Green Lightning.” (Buffalo News archives)

June, 1985: Acting State Supreme Court Judge Wayne Feeman ordered that the city not take any further steps to remove the sculpture, but also indicated that if Lawless relit the panels, that it could be removed as a public nuisance.

June 12, 1985: The News Editorial Board again took on the “Green Lightning” controversy.

“Aside from its artistic merits, which are a matter for art critics to decide, the sculpture placed many of its viewers, and the home city of its creator, in an untenable position.

“A great many people in Buffalo and elsewhere are not comfortable with displays as garishly suggestive as this one. That’s why they don’t normally appear in such prominent places — anywhere. If Lawless placed ‘Green Lightning’ in an art gallery or sculpture park, that might not have presented a problem.

“But it is on public land, in the center of one of the city’s busiest traffic corridors. The city was left with the choice of offending many of its own citizens or opening itself up to charges of prudishness and parochialism by suppressing an artwork.”

The editorial goes on to say that Mayor Griffin’s unilateral decision to dismantle the piece — condemned by a judge — only added to the sensationalism surrounding the work.

June, 1992: Both Lawless and Mayor Griffin testified at the trial where the artist sought damages from the city.

In claiming $500,000 in damages, Lawless said the removal of “Green Lightning” “was like an assault on me.” A psychologist testified Lawless felt victimized by the city.

Griffin said he thought it was “bad art,” but ordered it down over fears it could become a “public nuisance,” creating traffic problems.

“I’m no connoisseur,” testified the mayor, “but I felt the structure was an embarrassment to downtown Buffalo,” and could also do damage to the city’s reputation.

After the two-week trial, the jury found that the city failed to take proper legal steps before dismantling “Green Lightning,” but didn’t award Lawless any monetary damages.

With the lawsuit finished and the case over, News Critic Jeff Simon wrote in part, “As I understand the decision in the Billie Lawless ‘Green Lightning’ case, the jury decided: 1. That Mayor Griffin acted like a jerk tearing it down. 2. That Lawless acted like a jerk putting it up. 3. Therefore, it’s all moot. ‘Tsk, tsk’ on the mayor and no money for Lawless… Justice seems to have been served.”

After years on display in Chicago along the Eisenhower Highway, “Green Lightning” is now dismantled and stored at Lawless’ Cleveland studio.

The patch of grass where controversy erupted remained empty for 20 years — until a new corporate headquarters helped spark a different sort of interest in the neighborhood.

“This is the gateway to downtown as you exit the 33,” Mayor Byron Brown said at a 2014 news conference announcing plans to build Catholic Health’s new headquarters where 20 years earlier “Green Lightning” had stood. “To have all of these jobs coming to downtown Buffalo builds critical mass, more people working in downtown, and more people working downtown will be there to support businesses that are located in downtown Buffalo, so it’s very good news.”

Any chance to see if Buffalo’s sensibilities have changed?

“If they want to bring it back? Any time,” Lawless said in 2014. “And if they want to pay for it, that’s not a problem.”

But for Lawless and his erecting “Green Lightning” in Buffalo in 1984, it seems that it was less about the metal and lights and more about the reaction from the very beginning.

Buffalo in the ’80s: Hizzoner leads the parade

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Love him or not, there is no disputing the fact that James D. Griffin relished his time as Buffalo’s mayor, and there were few events where Mayor Griffin was more joyful than he was each year at Buffalo’s St. Patrick’s Day parades.

Buffalo News archives

“This is my 16th parade as mayor, but my 32nd all-around,” recalled Griffin at his last parade as mayor in 1993, as he had a beer outside DuBois Restaurant on Niagara Street. Unperturbed by the 14-degree windchill, he told News reporter Lauri Githens, “This is a great day. Every day is a blessed one for the Irish.”

The parade has been on Delaware Avenue now for decades, but before the building of the MetroRail in the early ’80s, Buffalo’s Irish and Irish-at-heart would parade up Main Street from Memorial Auditorium to North Street.

Bagpipers pipe past AM&A’s at Main and Court in 1972. (Buffalo News archives)

Since 1994, Buffalo’s second St. Patrick’s Day parade, the “Old First Ward Parade,” has brought grassroots marching and wearing of the green back to where it all started.

This 1937 photo shows the start of that year’s parade at Elk (now South Park Avenue) and Louisiana Street.

Buffalo News archives

News reporter Anne Neville wrote a comprehensive history of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2014. You can read that story here.

Buffalo in the ’70s: Surrounded by top Democrats, Dulski gives his final victory speech

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Flanked by State Sen. James D. Griffin, Erie County Democratic Chairman Joseph Crangle and County Legislator Dennis T. Gorski, Rep. Thaddeus Dulski made his final of eight victory speeches upon being elected to the House of Representatives for his eighth and final term in 1972.

Buffalo News archives

A UB-trained accountant, Dulski worked for the IRS until being elected to the Buffalo Common Council first as the Walden District member, then to an at-large seat. He went to Congress following the death of Rep. Edmund Radwan in 1959, and he spent the next 15 years representing Buffalo in Washington.

Dulski was a powerful figure in Washington as chairman of the Post Office Committee, and he was influential in crafting the laws deciding what could and what couldn’t be mailed legally.

Dulski bill defines ‘obscene’ in attack on smut mailings

Rep. Thaddeus Dulski (D., Buffalo) said today that trying to control obscene mail ‘is like trying to empty Lake Erie with a pail.’ 

As the chairman of the House Post Office & Civil Service Committee, Rep. Thaddeus J. Dulski (after whom Buffalo’s Dulski Federal Building was named) had a lot of power of deciding what you could and couldn’t receive in your mailbox.

He made railing against pornography and “continued unsolicited mailings to our young people” a priority and placed “a heavy accent on putting a ban on the mailing of smut into homes where minors reside.”

 

 

After he died in 1988, Buffalo’s federal office building — which Dulski was credited with gaining financial support in constructing — was renamed in his honor.

For more about the checkered and interesting history of that building, now known as the Avant, check out BN Chronicles’ look back at June 10, 1969.

 

Buffalo in the 70’s: ‘There’s no flowery rhetoric’ in Jimmy Griffin’s campaign

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

“Blunt-talking Griffin,” says the headline, “meets issues head-on along campaign circuit.”

Forty years ago today, September 4, 1975, State Sen. James D. Griffin was seeking the Democratic nomination for Erie County executive against Amherst supervisor, sporting goods store owner and 1946 Buffalo Bisons quarterback Al Dekdebrun.

Dekdebrun won the primary, but he lost to Republican incumbent Ned Regan in the general election.

Two years later, in 1977, Griffin again lost a Democratic primary for mayor but was elected to his first of four terms in City Hall from third-party lines.

Buffalo in the 90’s: WNY’s upbeat outlook after the bruising ’80s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It’s difficult for many of us to believe, but as of right now, parts of the 1990s were 25 years ago.

While the very beginning of the decade was filled for hope for Western New York, and seeds which were planted then are now the strongly rooted foundations of Buffalo’s resurgence, the 1990s were still a decade of growing pains. The direction, however, was usually the right one.

Outlook is upbeat after bruising 80s

“The ’80s was the great paradox,” said Common Council Majority Leader James W. Pitts. “It was a time when the city perhaps began on the road to recovery, while at the time traveling backwards.”

From the Buffalo news, January 1, 1990. Buffalo Stories archives