The earliest days of Buffalo broadcasting

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


History has set the start date of “The Radio Era” at November 2, 1920— when Pittsburgh’s KDKA Radio went on the air with the world’s first commercial broadcast, announcing the returns in the Presidential election that pit Ohio Senator Warren Harding against Ohio Governor James Cox.

History books don’t usually mention that Buffalo was on the air that night, too.

The Buffalo Evening News had set up a special direct telephone line to the home of amateur radio operator Charles Klinck, who was teacher of electrical science at Technical High School and was able to fund his expensive radio hobby a member of one of Buffalo’s top meat packing families.

After months of experimentation, he invented and pioneered the use of equipment that would allow for the clear transmission of phonograph records over his wireless transmitter.

“Well boys, how did you like that?” said Klinck, quoted in the Buffalo Courier after playing Strauss’ The Blue Danube. “Now listen, and I’ll give you a little jazz.”

That was the sound, on a March night in 1920, in the attic at 38 West Parade Avenue, as America’s first disc jockey took to the airwaves. You pass over the historic spot where it happened when you drive the outbound Kensington as you pass the Science Museum.

Klinck received word from as far away as Long Island that people were listening to his broadcasts. By mid-September, he reported that he was getting music requests from folks all over the northeast.

He also reported that from the beginning, the folks at the big wireless station in Pittsburgh were among his “most interested listeners.” Months before that “first broadcast,” the Westinghouse engineers at KDKA were tuned into Buffalo. On that Election Night 1920, Klinck was on the air from 6pm-midnight, offering election results interspersed with recorded music. Not only was he Buffalo’s deejay, but also Buffalo’s first radio newsman.

Charles Klinck, 1950

That first commercially sponsored broadcast in Buffalo was described the next day in The News.

As soon as the returns came into the Evening News office, they were telephoned over a special wire to Mr. Klinck’s residence, where they were received by a member of the Evening News staff. From 6 o’clock until midnight, Mr. Klinck sat at his wireless telephone apparatus and sent out the encouraging Republican news. Not only were city and county returns flashed out over the wireless outfit, but also state and national figures.

During the evening, Mr. Klinck… received word from several wireless operators in the city, in Lancaster and surrounding towns that they were getting the returns by wireless with perfect satisfaction… During lulls between dispatches, the operators who were listening for the returns were entertained by musical selections from a Victrola in the Klinck home.

Listeners in Lancaster were amazed as the radio returns beat out the Western Union telegraph service by minutes. Pine Street druggist Harry Frost told The News that he enjoyed the “returns by wireless telephone” immensely. “We sat around very comfortably smoking cigars and commenting on the election, while every few minutes, Mr. Klinck’s voice would roar out the results as he received them.”

Both the technical aspects and the reaction to Buffalo’s Election Night 1920 broadcast have been better chronicled than the “more historic” program the same night from Pittsburgh. The main difference remains that the KDKA broadcast was made by the Westinghouse Corporation in an effort to promote and sell the radio tubes they were manufacturing, while Charles Klinck was an amateur operator without much interest in self-promotion.

When he died in 1978, his pioneering radio exploits went generally unremembered. The Courier-Express, for example, made no mention.

In the decades leading up to the radio era, many advances and discoveries that laid the ground work for radio happened in Buffalo.

In 1909, The Buffalo Evening News was a pioneer in wireless telegraphy, building one of the world’s first wireless telegraph transmitting operations, Station WBL, on the fifth floor of The News headquarters building at Main and Seneca Sts. 

United Wireless Telegraph ran WBL from The Buffalo Evening News, 1909.

As early as 1924, a group of electrical engineers in Buffalo laid claim to having been the first to transmit and receive the human voice over radio waves in a series of experiments which took place at a Canisius High School laboratory in 1910.

John A. Curtin, later a professor at D’Youville College, reconfigured a primitive microphone to allow the voice to be transmitted and received over a wireless telegraph set.

The Canisius High School wireless set up, 1910

When Curtin said “A E I O U” into the microphone and across the airwaves, he might have become the first person to have their voice broadcast over radio. His voice was certainly the first broadcast in Buffalo.

About 18 months after the area got its first taste of commercial broadcasting with those election results, hundreds of people around Buffalo and Western New York tuned in their wireless radio receivers to hear the first broadcast of Buffalo’s first commercial radio station, WWT, on Easter Sunday, 1922.

The station was the first in Buffalo to be licensed by the federal government, and broadcast regularly three times a week. “Every Wednesday and Friday night and on Sunday afternoons the apparatus will be used to send out programs of an entertaining or educational nature,” reported the Buffalo Express.

Edna Zahn approaches the microphone at Buffalo’s WWT studios on West Mohawk Street on the station’s first day of broadcasting in 1922.

McCarthy Bros. & Ford company owned and operated the station from the third floor of its headquarters building across Mohawk Street from where the Hotel Statler was being built.  From electric washers and sewing machines to wireless radio receivers, McCarthy Bros. & Ford was in the business of selling electrical appliances and luxury items.

McCarthy Bros. & Ford, the home of Buffalo’s first radio station, WWT.

In order to sell radios, they needed to provide something for Buffalonians to receive on those radio sets.

That first transmission came at 3 p.m. on April 15, 1922. Buffalo’s airwaves were christened with the sounds of “throwing a kiss across the ether,” which was picked up in a radius of about 50 miles around Buffalo.

The lip smack of Genevieve Abraham kicked things off, followed by Buffalo soprano Edna Zahn and the piano accompaniment of Ethyol McMullen. These were the first sounds on Buffalo radio in the commercial era.

A look inside the WWT studios on the first day of broadcasting shows Ethyol McMullen, Edna Zahn and Edward O’Dea.

Edward O. O’Dea, who was later known as “Radiodea” on several Buffalo stations, was a sales manager for McCarthy Bros. as well as WWT’s station manager and announcer for that first broadcast. Edward H. Striegel was the first engineer.

Easter prayers and songs were offered by Episcopal and Catholic clergy and choirs during that first Easter Sunday.

Buffalo Chamber of Commerce President Albert Kinsley spoke on that first broadcast about the wonder of it all.

“Had I ventured, only 200 years ago, to say anything of the kind might be done, especially in Salem colony, I probably would have been burned at the stake for witchcraft.

“We have become accustomed to modern miracles that they are accepted now as a matter of course.

“When ancients credited Jove with hurling thunderbolts, they may have had the nucleus of an idea, but certainly no conception that I the 20th century electric waves would be hurled ‘round the world to carry the voices of mankind to serve our purpose.

“No man today can venture to limit the possible uses of this energy and probably none has the imagination to forecast its future.

“No one can say with certainty that we shall not yet step on a magic carpet of our own and be whisked where we wish to be with incredible speed.”

Buffalo’s first radio broadcast wrapped up with “Webb’s novelty entertainers” sending the sounds of jazz through the city.

WWT was first, but wasn’t alone very long.

On May 21, 1922, WGR broadcast its first programs from studios on the third floor of the Federal Telegraph Company on Elmwood Avenue, from a building that was the long-time home of FWS, and more recently has been renovated as the Foundry Suites and banquet facility.

Buffalo’s first two radio stations, WWT and WGR, both signed on the air in an effort to sell more radios.

Having only been broadcasting for five weeks, WWT Station Manager O’Dea suspended broadcasting for the first week WGR was on the air, to help avoid interference in WGR’s signal, as had happened several times when WGR was running tests using the experimental call sign 8XAD.

Shortly after WGR signed on, WWT took a break from its schedule for the summer of 1922. The signal and the memory of Buffalo’s first station faded away, mostly forgotten, into history.

As early as 1925, the Buffalo Courier ran a story asking readers if they remembered “old WWT,” “from a time when broadcasting was young.”

The earliest histories of broadcasting say that WGR was “Buffalo’s first commercially viable radio station.” When GR-55 celebrated 50 years on the air in 1972, the “commercially viable” part was dropped and they called themselves “Buffalo’s First Radio Station.”

WGR’s first home was on the third floor of the still-standing home of The Federal Telephone & Telegraph Co. at 1738 Elmwood Avenue. The building to the left is now the home of The Buffalo Spree. A viaduct was created to remove the grade-level crossing of the New York Central Beltline railroad, which now stands at the left side of this photo.

If WWT’s sign-on was met with a wholesome, “mom-and-pop” style fanfare, WGR’s sign-on came with a corporate marketing blitz.

“Next Sunday Buffalo will enter into the field of national radio broadcasting with the formal opening of one of the largest and most powerful broadcasting stations in the east, which may make Buffalo the ethereal center of this part of the country,” said the Courier.

WGR’s first week was billed as “Radio Week,” and each of Buffalo’s six daily newspapers were given their own evening to fill with programming. Monday was the Buffalo Courier; Tuesday, The Buffalo Evening News; Wednesday, the Buffalo Times; Thursday, the Buffalo Express; Friday, the Buffalo Commercial; and on Saturday, the Buffalo Enquirer.

An ad for a program from WGR’s first week on the air in 1922. The station isn’t mentioned, but there was only one on the air in Buffalo at the time.

The scheme assured a week’s worth of heavy promotion from the newspapers.

“(T)he Federal Telegraph & Telephone Company… has spent thousands of dollars to furnish Buffalo with a class of radio service which will be equal to that of stations which have been broadcasting since interest in radio began to assume such proportions,” reported the Courier.

L. R. Weller was the operator and announcer for WGR’s first broadcast. After prayers in Latin and then English from Rev. Michael J. Ahern, President of Canisius College, the first broadcast on WGR continued with addresses from Dr. Julian Park of UB and Rev. F. Hyatt Smith.

WGR’s first studio, 1922.

Buffalo Chamber of Commerce President Albert Kinsey was also among the first to step to the WGR microphone, and tell of Buffalo’s praises to radio listeners picking up the station in a 700-mile radius around Buffalo.

“He spoke of the great epoch of progress through which Buffalo is now passing and cited many instances of Buffalo’s material growth,” according to the Enquirer wrap-up of that first broadcast.

The station’s powerful signal was not only good for promoting Buffalo, but for promoting radio in Buffalo. Signals from amateurs and WWT were often weak and spotty and required expensive receivers to listen comfortably.

WGR’s first transmitting set, 1922.

The $25 set available from the owners of WGR radio could easily pick up the station within a 30-mile radius of the city.

“This renders radio reception in homes of Buffalo and vicinity no longer and instrument of the well-to-do, but for almost anybody who cares to use it.”

Radio had become a much more affordable hobby, but it was by no means cheap. Charles Klinck’s set-up was valued at about $5000 in 1920, which is more than $60,000 in 2020 dollars. That makes the $25 receiver much more affordable by comparison, but that price tag approaches $400 in 2020 dollars.

One trendy way the wealthy took to listening to the radio was as a railroad passenger. The Lackawanna Railroad heavily advertised that passengers could listen to WGR on the Buffalo Limited and the New York Limited.

“These train concerts are probably the most difficult type of radio work yet attempted,” bragged a Lackawanna ad. Below, the train’s radio receiver.

In May, 1923, WGR moved its broadcasting facilities from Elmwood Avenue near Hertel to become among the earliest tenants of Buffalo’s brand new Statler Hotel. These studios were on the hotel’s 18th floor. That space would later become the home of WBEN from 1930-1960.
Larco Radio set from The Larkin Store
The WGR staff getting ready to broadcast the 1924 Republican Convention: R.D.H. Nichols, operator; Milo Gurney, ad manager; Edward Stanko, operator; W.A. Rigg, studio manager; and T.A. Doddridge, operator.
Nichols, Doddridge, and Stanko in the WGR Statler Hotel control room, along with F.S. Martin, district manager for Federal Radio.

WGR was a licensed as a Class B station, which authorized it to broadcast on reserved frequencies, without interference from other stations, at high power. That meant the station could be heard regularly within several hundred miles, but could also be heard on occasion as far away as Hawaii and England. The special license also barred WGR from playing “canned music,” meaning only live performances were heard on Buffalo radio during the earliest years of regular broadcasting in Buffalo.

Another seller of radio equipment, Howell Electric, started WEBR Radio in 1924. Herbert H. Howell’s shop and station were located at 54 Niagara Street.

“With two stations in Buffalo operating alternately,” reported The Enquirer, “it will be possible for the radio fans to hear programs anytime during the day.”

Engineer John F. Morrison built and operated the station, the range of which was much more limited than WGR. Even through there were surprise reports of the station being picked up in Syracuse during tests, the intention was to “more fully serve local interests” with its programs.

WEBR owner Herbert H. Howell at the station microphone, 1925

WEBR’s sign-on stunt involved station owner Howell broadcasting over the station with instructions meant for Leslie Irvin—the parachute pioneer, who was flying in a plane above downtown Buffalo with pilot E.M. Ronne.

When Howell “directed the airmen where to send their machine,” the Courier reported, “almost simultaneously with the word of instruction the plane flew right and left, up and down.”

The station also initiated “the Sunshine Radio Club,” which was meant for radio fans to make a donation to help buy radios “for hospitals, orphan asylums, invalids, cripples, or, perhaps, a man who made a great sacrifice for you and me on the fields of France.”

After six months on the air, the station doubled its power as it moved from Niagara and Franklin to the top floor of the Bramson Building, the home of Marine Trust Bank on Main Street.

The new 11th floor studios and more powerful signal meant another Buffalo station was among the small, but growing handful of large stations operating across the country.

After several test broadcasts, the station received a letter from a new “regular listener” 1,200 miles away in Norman, Oklahoma.

Children visit WEBR’s Uncle Ben program, 1935. The boy furthest to the left is Gerhard Lang, nephew of the Lang Brewery owner, who was a regular junior announcer on the show after having told a bedtime story on the station’s first day of broadcasting. The large round object, draped in black bunting is the microphone, hidden to help relieve the anxiety of performers, unaccustomed to such devices.
The World Series was heard in Buffalo in 1925 over Station WMAK (as seen on the microphone), with Associated Press telegraph operator Charles Wiest reading each play as it came over the cable from Pittsburgh. This night, the Pirates beat the Senators in Game 2 by a 3-2 final.

In Lockport, Norton Laboratories began operating WMAK Radio in 1922, with I.R. Lounsberry as the chief engineer and manager. Lounsberry’s name would be associated with Buffalo radio right through the rock ‘n’ roll era as President of WGR.

WMAK became associated with The Buffalo Evening News, after The News broadcast election results on the station shortly after it signed on.

The station became more and more Buffalo-centric in its broadcasting, and in 1925, studios were opened in Buffalo’s Lafayette Hotel in association with the Buffalo Times newspaper.

Shortly after the studios opened, in October 1925, Associated Press telegraph operator Charles Wiest announced play-by-play action of the World Series in Pittsburgh under the direction of the Buffalo Times.

Wiest read the telegraph cables over the air moments after they happened on the diamond.

In 1926, WMAK’s place in history was secured when the station joined a “remote control broadcast chain” of stations across the northeast and Midwest in “an precedented demonstration” of “radiating a program” in nine cities simultaneously.

It was the world’s first network program, and the network that would grow from that first network broadcast was the Columbia Broadcasting System, CBS.

A pair of 60-foot radio towers stood atop Seneca Vocational High School until 1953.
Seneca Vocational students put on a radio drama over the WSVS airwaves, 1930s.

WSVS was another early Buffalo station, signing on in 1926. The studios were operated by the students of Seneca Vocational High School, and while many private high schools and colleges around the country received special licenses to broadcast, Buffalo’s Seneca High was the only public high school in the nation with a fully-licensed radio station.

Students at Seneca Vocational School learned the engineering and maintenance side of radio in classrooms as a part of the educational operation of WSVS.

When WSVS first signed on, many of its programs were on par with the commercial broadcasters of the day, with a heavy schedule of bands, orchestras, signing groups and soloists.

Through the years, WSVS’ broadcasts became more intermittent and more school-centered, as the station eventually shared the frequency of commercial broadcaster WBNY.

By the time WSVS surrendered its license in 1942, it had already been allotting near all of its broadcasting time to WBNY for years. Still, it was the last of the early educational stations to leave the airwaves, and the milestone was celebrated as the silencing of a pioneer in a national trade magazine.

Another selection in the long-forgotten alphabet soup of early Buffalo radio call letters is WPDQ. The station went on the air from the garage at 121 Norwood Avenue, owned by Nelson P. Baker (no relation to the Lackawanna priest.)

Garage owner Nelson Baker, upper left, WPDQ co-owner Hiram Turner at the controls, Frank Miller in the WPDQ studio at the microphone, 1925.

The station was on the air for one day—December 30, 1925—before the federal government suspended its license. The station eventually made it back on the air, broadcasting from the Varsity Theater on Bailey Avenue, until the station was sold and the call letters changed to WKEN and the studios moved to the corner of Delaware Avenue and Sheridan Drive.

WKEN also had regular broadcasting capabilities from Kenmore Presbyterian Church at Delaware and Hazeltine Avenues in Kenmore, and from the Great Lakes Theatre on Chippewa Street in Buffalo.

A federal rule change called barred some stations from being in residential areas, so the studio moved once again. This time literally.

The small building which was the home of station WKEN was taken by barge from Tonawanda to Grand Island in 1928.

The small building was wheeled up Sheridan Drive to the Niagara River, and then floated on a barge to Bush Road on Grand Island.

WKEN broadcast nightly stock report information, sponsored by an investment house in the Ellicott Square Building, 1930.

The callsign for WKEN was lost to history when The Buffalo Evening News bought the rights to its radio frequency and allowed the station to go dark, before signing back on as WBEN in September 1930.

From the moment WKBW first signed on, November 7, 1926, the evangelist owner Dr. Clinton Churchill said the randomly assigned call letters stood for “Well Known Bible Witness.”

Dr. Clinton Churchill, WKBW

Churchill came to understand the power of radio when his earlier broadcasts on WMAK and WEBR brought in bushel baskets filled with requests for more preaching, more music, and assumedly, a couple of dollars mixed in as well.

The preacher turned his Main Street Tabernacle building into a radio studio—it would later be the home of Channel 7.

“CT” inscribed on the studio seating for shows like Dialing for Dollars didn’t stand for “Commander Tom,” but for “Churchill Tabernacle.”

The Churchill Tabernacle’s Great White Robed Chorus ready to perform from what would become, 30 years later, audience seating for WKBW-TV shows like Dialing for Dollars.
WKBW Radio’s first studio, 1926.

As radio became more popular and businessmen around the country began to realize ways of making broadcasting lucrative and profitable, to that end a handful of wealthy Buffalonians moved to bring together Buffalo’s radio stations under a single umbrella.

In 1929, a million-dollar corporation was formed by a group of Buffalo bankers and businessmen to create the Buffalo Broadcasting Corporation— known informally as the BBC.

Linking WKBW, WGR, WMAK and WKEN promised “a vision of Buffalo as one of the country’s largest radio broadcasting centers.”

The directors of the new company included Marine Trust President George Rand, Western Savings President Charles Diebold, Jacob Schoellkopf, Irvine Kittinger, and Clinton Churchill.

“Nothing musical in Buffalo will be beyond the reach of the corporation,” said Churchill. “We will produce the very best in radio broadcasting, technically and artistically.

“We will maintain staff orchestras, bands, musicians and soloists, and we win immediately set about to eliminate the cheaper and undesirable types of programs.”

When the BBC was incorporated, it left WEBR as the lone independent station on Buffalo’s radio dial.

But not for long.

S.S. Wallace, Master of Ceremonies and announcer for the BBC, early 1930s
Oklahoma Hank and his Western Entertainers, on broadcasting on WGR with a BBC microphone.
Station personnel from WGR and WMAK as published in a national radio almanac, 1927.
Prince Edward, Later King Edward VIII, dedicating the Peace Bridge in 1927.

In 1927, WGR made world history by hosting the first international remote broadcast of its kind when the Peace Bridge was dedicated.

A “great network” of stations in the US and in Canada agreed to transmit the address simultaneously for the first worldwide broadcast ever attempted. It was heard from Britain to Australia.

The Prince of Wales, who would later become King Edward VIII, was the featured speaker in the program for the nearly 100,000 spectators who lined both sides of the Niagara River, which also featured Vice President Charles Dawes, British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, and New York Governor Al Smith.

Graham McNamee and Milton J. Cross, the top announcers for the National Broadcasting Company, were in Buffalo for the historic broadcast.

As New York Governor and then later as President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was no stranger to Buffalo and its microphones. Here, a speech by Gov. Roosevelt is being picked up by Buffalo Broadcasting Corporation microphones.

As a pioneering and early developing radio market, many of the talented people who helped shape the medium here in Buffalo through the 1920s moved on to fame and success outside of Western New York and became pioneers not just in Buffalo radio, but pioneers influencing the entire future of the medium.


This page is an excerpt from  100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting by Steve Cichon

The full text of the book is now online.

The original 436-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York. 

©2020, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon

Buffalo in the ’50s: Jackie Gleason eats at Ted’s dogs

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

When “The Great One” rolled up to Ted’s Jumbo Red Hots on Sheridan Drive on March 10, 1955 – 62 years ago today – he was one of America’s biggest TV stars.

Buffalo Courier-Express headline, 1952. (Buffalo Stories archives)

“The Honeymooners” didn’t debut as its own show until later that year, but Ralph, Alice, Norton and Trixie were stars of the most popular sketch on “The Jackie Gleason Show” – which was America’s second most watched TV show right behind “I Love Lucy.”

Apparently on the way to Niagara Falls, Gleason’s bright-red custom car, with license plate “10-JG,” pulled into Ted’s around 2 p.m. A man got out of the car and ordered “a tray filled with pizza and hot dogs,” which he took back to the car while Gleason and two women waited back in the car.

At least 20 people saw the TV star sitting in his car, but he never got out or talked to anyone there in the 20 minutes they were eating while parked there.

Ted’s has been in the same location on Sheridan Drive since 1948.

An ad for Ted’s from 1957. (Buffalo Stories archives)

A 1969 obituary described Theodore S. Liaros as “an early 20th century Greek immigrant who built a pushcart business into a citywide chain of park concessions.”

Until a stroke at the age of 78, Liaros had spent most of 57 years working 16-hour days, slinging popcorn and peanuts first from a wagon, then starting in 1927, hot dogs, loganberry and even pizza from a small shack that had been abandoned by construction workers after the completion of the Peace Bridge.

Even with the Peace Bridge stand operating, Ted’s lunch wagon was still a familiar presence at the Clinton-Bailey Market until the Sheridan Drive location opened.

Liaros’ death on Oct. 24, 1969, came only weeks after that original stand at the foot of Massachusetts Street near Niagara Street was bulldozed on Sept. 15 to make way for an improved I-190/Niagara Street interchange.

In 1957, the Liaros family built another stand near the Peace Bridge in Front Park near Porter Avenue, and occupied it through the early 1970s, when they built another restaurant on Porter Avenue.

Ted Liaros worked 16-hour days for 57 years.

But even though the TV stars visited Tonawanda and the Front Park shop was successful, the namesake of Buffalo’s favorite dog stand always loved that first wayward shack where he spent hundreds of thousands of hours during six decades.

“It was the place my father really had his heart in all these years,” Ted’s son Spiro Liaros said upon his father’s passing and the tearing down of the original Ted’s.

The original Ted’s was torn down to make way for easier highway access to the Peace Bridge in 1969.

The Liaros family still operates Ted’s.

Buffalo in the ’50s: Neon signs along the Peace Bridge

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Lines at the Peace Bridge are nothing new, but the scenery has changed through the years.

Buffalo Stories archives

Even when the toll was a quarter and the most evasive question you’d be asked was “Where do you live?,” the backups still felt like forever after a weekend of fun at the cottage or on the Comet.

While the cars were queued up in the 1950s, they were bathed in the glow of neon.

Monstrous iconic signs from Texaco Gasoline and O’Keefe Ale and Old Vienna Beer greeted international travelers to and fro during an age when crossing the bridge was a friendlier and less intrusive experience.

As Texaco shouted “Welcome to Buffalo” in light, O’Keefe and OV advertised what were then two of the Dominion of Canada’s most popular beers. Old Vienna remained a blue-collar Buffalo favorite through the 1980s, with many taverns offering specials on OV splits — Old Vienna beer in 7-ounce bottles. An O’Keefe sign also graced the top of the Hancock Building in Niagara Falls.

Buffalo News archives

 

What It Looked Like Wednesday: ‘That thing in the water next to the Peace Bridge’

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

It’s not the most eloquent title, but you knew exactly what I was talking about, didn’t you?

The Peace Bridge, shortly after it opened in the late ’20s. Buffalo’s old municipal water intake is visible between the piers of the bridge. This structure fed water to the Massachusetts Avenue Pumping Station to supply water to the City of Buffalo. (Buffalo Stories archives)

People have been asking “what is that thing?” since before the Peace Bridge was built.

From Fort Erie: Water intake pier for the City of Buffalo before the building of the Peace Bridge. That’s Fort Porter, which was torn down to make way for the Peace Bridge plaza. Buffalo Stories archives

Since the current water intake building opened in 1913, the old one now next to the Peace Bridge has slowly deteriorated, to the point where it’s little more than a concrete stump in the middle of the Niagara River today.

The current Buffalo water intake, which feeds water to the Col. Ward Pumping Station to supply Buffalo with water. (Derek Gee/News file photo)

The Peace Bridge was dedicated by the Prince of Wales in 1927. Nine years later, he became King Edward VIII, but abdicated 11 months later to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. He was the uncle to Queen Elizabeth.

Peace Bridge dedication, 1927. Buffalo Stories archives

 

Buffalo in the ’80s: Questions we aren’t asked anymore

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Our day-to-day lives are filled with common almost reflexive interactions we barely think about. Quite often, we barely notice when one changes or goes by the wayside.

Here is a collection of several questions that were commonly asked around Buffalo in the 1980s, but not so much today.

Paper or Plastic?

grocers097

When this photo of the Vogt Brothers and their Bells and Super Duper grocery bags appeared in The News in 1986, the accompanying story showed a city divided over the question.

What will we cover our school books in, or use to cover our turkeys to keep them moist should the paper bag go away, were among the questions asked.

Thirty years later, the paper bag is an anachronism. It’s still available, but for most it looks more like a vestige of another time rather than a way to carry your groceries home.

Many are working to give the plastic bag the same treatment. Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz spearheaded efforts earlier this year to examine the feasibility of banning plastic bags at grocery stores.

According to grocery supply company Topco, the sale of reusable shopping bags is a $75 million market in the U.S.

Smoking or non?

For decades, this was the ubiquitous ice-breaking question posed from restaurant hostess stations — but not since 2003 in New York State.

While this question might still be asked in other places across the country, New York’s Clean Indoor Air Act banned smoking in all public places in the state 13 years ago.

Where d’ya live?

Buffalo News archives

The question is still asked in a number of different ways in the volley of questions and exchanges of passports now needed to cross the border at the Peace Bridge.

But there was a simpler time, before 9/11, when just the answer to that question alone was often enough to get you over the bridge for some Chinese food at Happy Jack’s, rides at Crystal Beach, or to fill up with some cheaper Canadian gas.

Regular or Unleaded?

Buffalo News archives

That’s a gas station question that’s triple extinct.

Regular now means a grade of unleaded. Old-fashioned regular gasoline — the lead-additive-filled kind — is no longer generally available. And besides that, it’s difficult to find full-service stations where you might be asked anything by a gas pump attendant anymore.

This photo of the Mobil station at the corner of Elmwood and Forest in 1986 says the station is self-serve, but still shows the two grades of gas they offer as regular and unleaded.

Starting in 1973, the EPA ordered the phase-out of tetraethyl lead additives to gasoline. In 1975, car manufacturers began introducing catalytic converters in vehicles to make them run smoother and cleaner, thereby negating the need for the lead.

Regular was cheaper than unleaded, but leaded gas would ruin a catalytic converter, and make for a costly repair. By the end of the ’80s, “regular” gas was mostly phased out.

Can you think of other questions we aren’t asked anymore?

Buffalo’s love affair with the hot dog

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

There are few things we consider more American — and relish with more Buffalove — than the hot dog, especially on a nice summer afternoon. But that wasn’t always the case.

Ted's, with Peace Bridge railing overhead. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Ted’s, with Peace Bridge railing overhead. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Around the same time Ted Liaros was opening his first red hot shack under the Peace Bridge, Mayor Frank X. Schwab was working to rid Buffalo’s streets of what he saw as the great wiener menace.

Schwab, Buffalo’s brewer mayor — who was convicted of violating Prohibition laws while in office — thought beer was OK, but the frankfurter should be banished. In 1922, he fought for and won the right to license and regulate the city’s growing number of hot dog stands with the notion to close them down, threatening to “arrest any hot dog merchant who held forth in the streets.”

It wasn’t the hot dog itself as much as the apparent willingness of hucksters to set up almost anywhere without regard to surroundings or sanitation.

A few years later, state leaders declared Buffalo’s roadside hot dogs stands “a menace to public health,” especially with regards to the keeping and selling of milk products without any proper way to stop spoilage. Dr. Edward Clark of the state health department called the red hot emporium “an institution which must be brought under special state control.”

One vendor on South Division Street was proud of his stand, and bragging of cleanliness with each patron’s “loaf of bread, hunk of meat, and smear of mustard.” The crackdown was welcomed by the owners of clean stands. “Every effort is made,” said another frankfurter hut owner, “to keep the quality of the rolls and the wieners.”

Buffalo and hot dogs were a natural marriage. For decades, Buffalo had been one of America’s leading meat packing cities, and many of the great names in meat processing have been great names in the fight to fill Buffalo’s hot dog buns.

 

At one point, the Dold name was tops with “wiener sausage.” The Jacob Dold Packing Company was Buffalo’s largest at the turn of the century, even having a display at the Pan-Am Exposition showcasing “the art of curing meats.” Dold sold out to Hygrade in 1938.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Frank Wardynski came to Buffalo from Poland in 1915, and soon after started running a butcher shop on Peckham Street in the shadow of St. Stanislaus Church in the heart of Polonia. In 1979, Wardy’s turning out three million pounds of sausage a year. Today, the company is run by third generation ownership, which also bought the rights to use the name Shelly Meats. The cold cuts and sausages of A. Szelagowski & Sons were Buffalo’s favorite for decades.

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Shelly Meats, 1983 (Buffalo News atchives)

Coming to Buffalo in the same wave of Polish immigration that brought rival Wardynski here, Joseph Malecki was a butcher in Opatowek, Poland, when he came to Buffalo in 1914. His children, Ronald and Virginia, were selling $2 million of Malecki’s Polka Brand Sausages by 1963. After 73 years of East Side sausage making, Malecki Meats closed its doors in 1988, leaving many lovers of their links heartbroken.

Maleckis---Grandmas-Choice-

Buffalo Stories archives

As the word of Malecki’s demise spread, countless Western New Yorkers made a trek to Ted’s for one last dog.

Malecki baloney. (Buffalo News archives)

Malecki baloney. (Buffalo News archives)

“This is a big shock to me and to all of us who work here,” Ted’s manager Marc Candino told The News days before the Malecki dogs dried up. “We’re still using Malecki. We expect our last shipment Monday, which means you can only get a Malecki dog here until Tuesday… with maybe a couple left over for Wednesday.”

Ted's served Malecki's hot dogs until the day the Malecki plant closed down in 1988. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Ted’s served Malecki’s hot dogs until the day the Malecki plant closed down in 1988. (Buffalo Stories archives)

 

Ted’s now serves what is the undisputed king of hot dogs in Western New York, direct from the Sahlen’s smokehouse. The Sahlen family has been processing meat and meat products for Buffalonians since 1869, and has been selling hot dogs since they started to be popular around the turn of the century.

Inspecting a Sahlen smokehouse hot dog, 1977. (Buffalo News archives)

Inspecting a Sahlen’s smokehouse hot dog, 1977. (Buffalo News archives)

In 1994, Sahlen’s was bringing in $17 million in sales — about 60 percent of which was in wieners. They were cranking out about 40 million hot dogs a year, good for 70 percent of the Buffalo hot dog market.

“Sahlen’s has always been Buffalo’s hot dog, and will always be, in my opinion,” Mark Battistoni, sales manager of Sahlen Packing Co. told The News in 2012. “We have a (143)-year history and commitment to the community.”

 

Buffalo in the ’30s: New in the BPD arsenal — tear gas

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

From April 21, 1938:

Buffalo News archives

Huge projectiles from stubby shotguns created formidable tear gas barrages in Centennial Park today as new equipment was demonstrated to police. Commissioner Glenn H. McClellan, Patrolman Walter Jabcuga and Lt. Alfred Sendker of the mounted squad examined equipment.

The Peace Bridge is visible in the background.

Buffalo in the ’30s: The old booze-hidden-in-the-apron trick

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Buffalo News archives

From Jan. 16, 1920, to Dec. 5, 1933, Prohibition was the law of the land … and Buffalo was a center for the import of illegal booze.

In Buffalo and around the country, organized crime grew from Americans’ insatiable thirst for liquor. Spirits were smuggled by the boatload into Western New York from Canada.

While some folks turned to making moonshine or bathtub gin at home, others did their best to figure out a way to bring a nip home from Fort Erie undetected.

Often that worked – but it didn’t work for the man who was arrested wearing this apron of booze under his clothing when he crossed into the U.S. over the Peace Bridge in 1930.

Buffalo in the ’90s: Coast Guard approves building twin span to Peace Bridge

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Douglas Turner reported from Washington that after some delay, the Coast Guard approved the building of a twin span to the current Peace Bridge.

Coast Guard approves building twin span

“The U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday approved the Peace Bridge Authority’s plan to “twin” the existing 1927 bridge and will issue a construction permit to the authority in the next few days.”

Sens. Charles Schumer and Daniel Patrick Moynihan voiced disappointment, as they joined many other elected officials in seeking a signature span. The next day, Patrick Lakamp reported that Common Council President James Pitts was ready to sue to stop the building of a twin span. Years later, the planning continues:

City officials begin moving to block twin span

“Pitts also said he plans to invite authority officials to his next Super Span Signature Bridge Task Force meeting to talk about the easements the authority needs from the city.

“The easements are needed because the Peace Bridge twin would cross a parcel of city land.

” ‘If they want to talk about the easements, they have to come to the meeting,’ said Pitts, who views the session as a chance to discuss an alternative design with the authority.”

Moving pictures that will move Buffalo: Pathe posts entire newsreel collection on-line

By Steve Cichon | steve@buffalostories.com | @stevebuffalo

BUFFALO, NY – It’s an amazing treasure trove.

Pathe (pronounced {path-AY’}) News, one of the leading producers of the newsreels shown in movie theatres around the world from the 1920s through the 1960s, has posted it’s entire 85,000 video clip collection on YouTube.

blizzard37-1
Dateline: Buffalo! The old Pathe newsreel service posted 85,000 news and lifestyles films to YouTube, including ten showcasing some part of life in Buffalo. These newsreels, featured in movie theatres before the feature shows, were the “evening newscasts” of the time. (Buffalo Stories screenshot from “British Pathe” YouTube Channel video)

Think of the ways the world changed in that time, and know that you can easily watch clean, first generation videos of those changes as they happened, online. It’s an incredible digitization effort, and it’s even more incredible that it’s available to the world for free.

While the scope of the project is impressive, my parochial interests took me not in search of the Hindenberg, the liberating of Paris, or the first manned space flight. I, of course, searched “Buffalo.”

Many videos came up in the search, but there were ten relevant items which prove to be flabbergasting glimpses into Western New York’s past.

What follows here are links to those videos, with brief descriptions and screen shots taking a look back.

The Dodgers! A Prohibition Sidelight From Buffalo (1931)

Border police inspecting cars, looking for “the good stuff” at what appears to be the Peace Bridge, but I’m not sold on that– Booze smuggling was a growth industry in our border town while the US was forcibly on the wagon during Prohibition.

Buffalo, US (1939)

Curtiss Aeroplane test pilot Lloyd Child hits 525 miles an hour, faster than man has ever gone before, while testing the French Hawk pursuit plane.

Blizzard In Buffalo (1937)

Three people were killed in what was, at the time, the worst December snow storm in history. Great snow footage and scenes from around Buffalo.

 

Skiing Behind Plane Buffalo (1938)

The Red Jacket Ski Club does what looks like water skiing… But on snow instead of water, and a plane instead of a boat. Wacky!!

President Johnson’s Quick Tour Of New York & New England (1966)

President Lyndon Johnson visits Buffalo. The first scene is great– people at the Buffalo Airport, then a Niagara Square rally for the President. From there, it’s on to Lake Erie, where LBJ, surrounded by local dignitaries (like Mayor Frank Sedita and Deomcratic Chairman Joe Crangle) is shown a pail of filthy, contaminated water from Lake Erie. It would become the beginning of movement in the efforts to clean up the lakeshore in Buffalo.

Us Women’s Golf Championship (1931)

With The Country Club of Buffalo in Williamsville as the backdrop, beautiful flapper women vie to become the US womens golf champion.

Snow Scenes In States (1962)

A perefct example of the over-the-top writing and delivery that has become associated with newsreels. Snow swept across two-thirds of the country, including many places that usually see little snow. The whole two minute piece is fun to watch, but there are a few quick shots of Buffalo starting at :46.

 

Striking Schoolteachers U.S.A. (1947)

Buffalo Public School teachers shown on strike at schools across the city… Also featured: The smiling faces of dozens of children, happy to be out of class.

Bell Helicopter (1944)

The brand new Bell helicopter on display inside the Buffalo (Connecticut Street) Armory.

Oh – This Spring Weather (1926)

Cold and snow hits Buffalo during the brutal spring of 1926, when we had a freakish St. Patricks Day storm. This is video from all of the ships paralyzed in Buffalo Harbor.