Legacy of the Seneca-Babcock Boys’ Club

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo


Excerpt from 100 Years of Buffalo Broadcasting 


For many kids and teens of the Eisenhower era, the different kinds of sounds coming out of radios gave them something of their own to listen to while doing their homework or on a transistor radio snuck under a pillow after bedtime.

There are also those who listened to deejays like The Hound and Lucky Pierre and were inspired to spend the next 60 years entertaining the world.

For example, Buffalo radio legends Sandy Beach and Jefferson Kaye, both of whom grew up in Massachusetts, listened to the Hound over KB’s powerful signal as youngsters and cited him as an inspiration.

But right here in Buffalo, a handful of the boys who’d be the broadcast Pied Pipers of their generation got their radio start in an old brick building in South Buffalo’s Seneca-Babcock neighborhood.

A group of friends from St. Monica’s grammar school on Orlando Street spent most of the rest of their free time at the Boys’ Club a couple blocks away on Babcock Street.

The club’s organized activities, mostly sports, weren’t exactly what these boys were after. “They weren’t much for boxing,” activities director Jimmy Coyle would say for years after, “they were more for talking.”

Past members of the Babcock Boys’ Club, from the Courier-Express, 1964

Danny Neaverth, Joe Pinto (who’d later become Joey Reynolds on the radio), Bill Masters (who spent 20 years on WEBR and WBEN), Danny McBride (whose local broadcasting career spanned 60 years) were all major players starting a closed-circuit radio station for the club.

Joey Pinto, center, brought his home record player to the Boys’ Club when the one in the club broke. That’s Joe Marszalak and Richard Quinn with him in a photo that ran in the Buffalo Evening News in 1956.      

The boys convinced Boys’ Club manager Gurney Jenkins to get rid of an old jukebox that played 78 rpm records for Monday night dances and replace it with a modern record player and a microphone. Once they got the green light, all the boys went to work.

WBCB could only be heard inside the Babcock Boys’ Club, but offered Buffalo the first taste of what would fill the airwaves for decades to come.

Joe Pinto sent letters to record promoters and radio stations asking for old, about to be discarded, or greatly discounted records. He walked all over the city to collect the 45s which offered a more modern beat for the Boys’ Club dances.

Neaverth and McBride wired the whole building for sound, and now the set-up was more than just for dances in the gym. There was music, news, and even commercials on a regular schedule. They boys eventually started doing play-by-play of the sporting events at the club.

And a decade before their KB Radio cross-talk between Neaverth’s afternoon show and Reynolds’ evening show became the talk of Buffalo, the same two kids became the talk of South Buffalo with their “pretend” radio station at the Boys’ Club.

While Danny and Joey were at The Boys’ Club and Bishop Timon, Tom Shannon was at Bishop Ryan High, getting one of his first on air gigs leading the school in the rosary as Fr. Rufus looked on.

Boys’ Club veteran Danny McBride serves Pepsi-Cola and hot dogs at a WEBR Record Hop.

WEBR deejays Tap Taplin, Bob Wells, Bernie Sandler, and Jack Eno prepare to broadcast live for a full week from the newest Your Host restaurant in the Sheridan Drive Plaza, Sheridan at Niagara Falls Blvd. in 1953.


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

Torn-Down Tuesday: St. Monica church on Orlando Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

What would become known as the Seneca-Babcock section of the city sprung from the outgrowth of the Old First Ward and South Buffalo, St. Monica Roman Catholic Church and school was built on Orlando Street in 1913.

St. Monica church and school as it neared completion in 1913.

The building was a utilitarian one, and mirrored very closely similar church/school structures that were springing up in newly populated areas – or areas where there were demographic shifts – around Buffalo.

Many newly formed neighborhood parishes built combination church/school structures with the church on the main floor and school rooms upstairs and downstairs.

This particular building was designed by Lansing, Bley and Lyman, and was dedicated on June 14, 1914, by Bishop Charles Colton and Monsignor Nelson Baker.

The parish was carved from St. Teresa on Seneca Street in South Buffalo, St. Stephen on Elk Street in the First Ward and St. Patrick on Emslie Street in the Hydraulics district. Taking from neighborhoods that were Irish, Polish and German, from the beginning the community as St. Monica was based on geography more than ethnicity, as many other Catholic churches around Buffalo of the time were.

After more than 80 years of serving the community, and with the retirement of the pastor, Monsignor William Setlock, St. Monica’s was closed and merged with SS Rita and Patrick Church in 1995.
The building on the short block of Orlando Street between the I-190 and Seneca Street was torn down in 1997, and in its place, a well-manicured patch of grass.

 

Torn-Down Tuesday: The steel bridges of Seneca Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The widespread removal of old steel truss bridges is one of the great landscape changes across the City of Buffalo over the last 50 years.

Looking north on Seneca Street, just before the Seneca/Smith/Fillmore intersection, 1985.

Those old steel spans stood as a testament to our rail and steel industries in Buffalo. Now the bridges, the trains and the coke ovens are mostly the stuff of memories.

Two old steel bridges were removed just south of the Larkin District in 1986.

The Larkin Building is visible in the distance between the Smith Street viaduct and Seneca Street bridge.  The bridge, viaduct and most of the rail tracks were removed — along with several of the buildings in this photo — and replaced with grass and roads at grade level. The removal of the Smith Street Bridge forever changed the landscape for the Valley neighborhood, which was given it’s name because the only way to access the community was over a bridge.

This is what the street looks like now:

Further south on Seneca Street at Elk, an old steel truss bridge was replaced when a new $260,000 bridge with “shiny aluminum rails” opened in October 1959.

Seneca at Elk, 1959

The bridge doesn’t look much different today, but just on the other side of the Buffalo River does.

Deco Restaurant, Seneca Street at the Buffalo River, 1959.

On what has been a vacant lot now for decades, stood a warmly remembered South Buffalo landmark — a Deco Restaurant at 1670 Seneca St.

Happy Birthday, Grandma Coyle

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Grandpa Coyle took this picture of his girl while they were dating some time in the late 40s. Today, they’re celebrating her birthday together in heaven. She’s no longer here, but the love she gave to us continues to grow and flourish every day. She was about as good as they come. Happy Birthday, Grandma!

June Marie Wargo, late 1940s.

People have told me my grandpa was the toughest guy in Seneca-Babcock.

Jimmy Coyle, the toughest guy in Seneca-Babcock, in front of a gin mill with an Iroquois Beer neon light.

He was a bouncer at the Southside Athletic Club and ran the Seneca-Babcock Boys Club.

Gramps met his match with this little 5’2″ lady.