The Cold Spring Hotel at Main & Michigan, rest stop for weary travelers

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

Have you ever had the kind of commute where you feel like you need a break halfway between Williamsville and downtown Buffalo?

Main & Michigan, 1880.

While bumper-to-bumper traffic can make modern commuters weary, 150 years ago, before the Main-Williamsville Road was paved, the slow and dusty plodding trek from Buffalo — which then ended at North Street — to points north and east was a bit more of challenging.

Cold Spring Hotel, Main & Michigan, circa 1875.

Garret Marshall’s Cold Spring Hotel was built well outside Buffalo city limits at the corner of Main and Michigan. It was a stop on the stagecoaches heading between Buffalo and places “out the main road” such as Williamsville, Clarence and Batavia. For folks on their way into Buffalo, it was a final “freshening up” stop before getting into the city.

It was marketed as a “summer resort” for city residents, surrounded by gardens and time away from the grit and noise of daily life at the dawn of the industrial age.

From the Buffalo Commercial, 1873

In 1854, the City of Buffalo expanded its limits beyond North Street to about the current borders. Main Street was “Macadamized,” an early form of paving using small crushed stones. As a mode of mass transportation, the stage coach was giving way to street cars and trolley lines.

In 1870, the Cold Spring Hotel was “refitted and improved in the best manner” and “ready to receive guests at all times.”

“All the luxuries of the season, oysters, clams, &c are constantly on hand and served in any style desired,” said an ad in the Courier, which also went on to talk about the fine selection at the bar.

“He has also put up to of the best billiards tables in the city, in a large, pleasant room where ‘Knights of the cue’ can while away the time in a most agreeable manner.”

By the 1880s, those trolley lines were taking more guests further out of downtown and even past Main and Michigan. In 1890, the Cold Spring Hotel was torn down, and a trolley and street car barn was built in its place.

It’s the same spot where the NFTA stores and maintains buses to this day.

Amherst turns 200!

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Today is Amherst’s 200th Birthday! It’s official because it says so on Wikipedia:

The town of Amherst was created by the State of New York on April 10, 1818; named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst. Amherst was formed from part of the town of Buffalo (later the city of Buffalo), which had previously been created from the town of Clarence. Timothy S. Hopkins was elected the first supervisor of the town of Amherst in 1819. Part of Amherst was later used to form the town of Cheektowaga in 1839.

Here are a few of our looks back at the Town of Amherst over the years:

What it looked like Wednesday: The Village of Williamsville, 1933

Torn-down Tuesday: Ice cold beers in Williamsville, 1888

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Main Street, Williamsville, 1960s

Buffalo in the ’50s: The state’s first McDonald’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard

Torn-Down Tuesday: Henry’s Hamburgers, Sheridan at the Boulevard

Buffalo in the ’70s: Twin Fair is closed on Sundays, but Two Guys is open for business

 

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Main Street, Williamsville, 1960s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A series of postcards showing off different portions of Main Street give a fantastic look back at the Village of Williamsville and how it’s changed since the 1960s.

Government buildings on the east side of Main are a mix of old and new.

(Buffalo Stories archives)

The building that once housed the Amherst Police is now the Williamsville Village Hall and Hutchinson Hose Company. While the Williamsville Library doesn’t look all that different, the lot just to the north does for sure. The stone building on the postcard above is the old Williamsville Village Hall, built in 1908 as offices for both the town and village.

The stone building was torn down in 1965 to make way for the current Amherst Town Hall.

The names on the buildings have changed, but the buildings themselves haven’t changed much over the last 60 years at Main Street and Cayuga Road. Among those gone are Mister Donut, Glen Pharmacy, Fred Roneker’s and Marine Trust.

(Buffalo Stories archives)

Another block south, and the view is still mostly familiar.

(Buffalo Stories archives)

A house has given way to a parking lot next door to Ss. Peter & Paul Catholic Church on Main Street.

Torn-down Tuesday: Ice cold beers in Williamsville, 1888

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

When Matt Horey died in 1926, he was remembered in The News as “well-known in Williamsville and surrounding areas, having had a place of business at the corner of Main and Cayuga Streets.” The business, depending on which description you believe, was either a hall, a hotel, a saloon or a tavern.

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This photo appeared in The News in 1949, courtesy of the Horey family.

Aside from a tavern, Horey’s was also a regular polling place around the turn of the 20th century.

horeys-1900

The building was torn down in 1923 to make way for a bank building, which was a Liberty Bank branch for many years.

liberty-bank

It’s now the home of a Bank of America branch.

What it looked like Wednesday: The Village of Williamsville, 1933

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This airborne shot of Main Street in the Village of Williamsville looks down Main from what is now the Creekview Restaurant, past what is now Amherst Town Hall, down to what is now the Beach-Tuyn Funeral Home and beyond.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Williamsville Island is now Island Park, and the home to Old Home Days.

The Buffalo You Should Know: WNY amusement parks through the decades

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Just what counts as an amusement park has been determined on a sliding scale since the phrase was first recorded in the 1890s.

Buffalo News archives

Crystal Beach, 1989. (Buffalo News archives)

Tell an iPad kid of today that he’s going to an amusement park, and visions of mega-coasters and waterparks at Darien Lake or Disney World will dance in his head.

It’s a far cry from when Buffalonians of not-so-long-ago were contented with the tilt-a-whirl and a merry-go-round permanently set up in some department store parking lot.

11-june-1969-glen-park-crys

For a century, Buffalo’s gold standard for amusement parks — no matter how that term was defined — was Crystal Beach. When it was founded in 1888, Crystal Beach was celebrated for the healing powers of its natural sand and crystal-clear waters. Steamboat excursions from Buffalo, first on the Puritan and the Pearl and later on the Americana and Canadiana, brought visitors to Lake Erie’s Canadian shores, but also to several similar resorts along the shores of Western New York.

Elmwood Beach Grand Island

In 1897, Grand Island’s Elmwood Beach was promoted as the only temperance — that is, alcohol-free — park and beach on the American side of the international border. It was opened in 1894 by the White Line lake steamer company, to provide its passengers with a destination it called “The Island Paradise of Buffalo.” It was operated by Harvey Ferren, owner of the Court Street Theatre downtown.

elmwood-beach-steamer

It was built as “a safe place for bathing” for women and children, with hard white-sand beaches. Special park police made sure that there was no “objectionable swim attire” at this summer resort that “was on a scale previously unknown in the area.” The fact that no liquor was sold there made it a popular destination for church groups, which boarded the boat to the resort at the foot of Ferry Street.

Elmwood-woodlawn-1897

Elmwood Beach was one of a handful of such resorts that popped up on Grand Island. Eldorado Beach was another.

New “high-class amusements and novelties” were unveiled for the 1899 season, but by 1910, the place had been abandoned. The parcel eventually became part of Beaver Island State Park, unveiled in 1939.

West Seneca’s Lein’s Park, Cheektowaga’s Bellvue Park, Fillmore Avenue’s Teutonia Park

These rustic, outdoorsy amusement areas were a drive out to the country in their day, but the land they were once located upon has long since been developed. The areas were used most by Buffalo’s growing German immigrant population.

Leins1

Lein’s Park was built over the course of nearly a decade by Gardenville’s Henry Lein, just south of Cazenovia Creek and what is now Southgate Plaza on Union Road, starting in 1895.

Home to a bear pit, bowling alley and dance hall, the park closed up at some point after Lein — who served as West Seneca town supervisor — was found guilty of graft and sent to prison in Auburn in 1913. He was later pardoned by the governor and re-elected supervisor.

Teutonia-park-ad

Buffalo’s German-Americans were clearly the target clientele for Fillmore Avenue’s Teutonia Park, “the family resort of the East Side” of the 1880s and 1890s.

Teutonia-Park-German-dragoo

While catering to Germans, the grounds one block north of Martin Luther King Jr. (then Parade) Park were owned by Baptist Kahabka, “one of Buffalo’s leading Polish citizens.” The park was one of Buffalo’s leading sports and conventions grounds, with boxing matches and picnics attracting crowds of up to 10,000 people somewhat regularly.

In 1921, the city cleared the land where the park once stood, and built East High School on the easternmost part of the plot.

Bellevue Park sprang up along Cayuga Creek at the last stop of a trolley line from Buffalo. The Bellevue Hotel on Como Park Boulevard was once a part of the sprawling 30-acre park, which was open until around the turn of the century.

Bellvue-Park

Woodlawn Beach

Touted as “The American resort for Americans,” Woodlawn Beach tried to take on Crystal Beach directly, hoping to scoop up some of the thousands who arrived at Buffalo’s Central Wharf to get on ships bound for Canada.

Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Stories archives

The steamer Corona, and later the steamer Puritan, took passengers to Woodlawn Beach four times daily from Buffalo. The grounds opened in 1892 with a toboggan slide and “ice-cream” as main attractions. As early as 1894, ads also bragged about the park’s being “illuminated with electricity.”

In 1920, it was electricity that was bringing Buffalonians to Woodlawn in streetcars on what was billed as “only a seven-minute ride” from downtown. Two years later, Bethlehem Steel bought up some of the property for use as a slag dump, but the old roller coaster and amusements stayed in place in various states of operation through the Great Depression.

The evolution of many of these Victorian health retreats and picnic grounds into the more modern amusement park concept was pushed along by one of the great marvels of Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition: “A Trip to the Moon.”

triptomoon

Located on the Midway on near what is Amherst Street today, “A Trip to the Moon” offered 60 passengers at once the most technologically advanced amusement of its time. A ride in a “spaceship” offered a simulated tour of the moon.

amusement-parks058

The ride caught the fancy of tens of thousands of visitors to Buffalo and at least that many Buffalonians. That was no doubt behind the idea in naming the features of Fairyland Park at Jefferson at Ferry after the Pan-Am’s big attractions. In 1910, “the Mecca of pleasure-seekers” was promoting its midway and Temple of Music — both with names taken directly from the Pan-Am. But other budget attractions inspired by the world-class event included Mysterious Asia, Cave of the Winds, White Horse Tavern, Southern Plantation, Japanese Rolling Balls, Minerva the Mystic and Reed’s Big Congress of Novelties.

fairyland-ad

“Luna Park was built just after the Pan-American Exposition and was the nearest thing to Coney Island in the pleasure line that Buffalo had to offer,” reported the Buffalo Courier in 1909 after the city’s biggest-ever amusement park burned to the ground at the corner of Main and Jefferson.

Carnival-court-1910

Click for larger view. Buffalo Stories archives

Renamed Carnival Court, the old Luna Park cost more than $250,000 to rebuild. Five cents admission gained you access to rides like Shoot the Chutes, the L. A. Thompson Mountain Scenic Railway, Auto-whirl, Witching Water Ways, Galloping-Horse Carousel, Human Roulette Wheel and Ocean Waves.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

The site was razed to make way for a Sears Roebuck store and parking ramp in 1929. Both of those former Sears structures are now part of the Canisius College campus.

Built in Western New York

A Western New York company gave rise to many smaller amusement parks around the country in the years following World War II.

Herschell-rides

When demand for the handcrafted carousels that had made the company famous since 1880 started to wane, North Tonawanda’s Allan Herschell Co. began making smaller amusement rides it marketed as attractions to small and large venues alike.

Opened originally in the 1920s as a dance pavilion, Lalle’s at Lake Bay, Angola, steadily added amusement rides and booths through the 1940s and 1950s. New amusements for 1947 included the miniature zeppelin, auto and railroad rides, the Dodge-Em, the Ocean Wave and the Chair Plane.

lalles-ad

These smaller amusements were used to entice parents to bring their children — and maybe do some additional shopping — in several places around Western New York. Buffalo’s first suburban mega-shopping center, the Thruway Plaza, opened in 1952 with a handful of rides in its Kiddie Ranch.

Thruway-Plaza-Kiddie-Ranch-

Just up Walden Avenue, on the corner of Dick Road, stood Twin Fair Kiddieland in the parking lot of the department store.

twin-faor-kiddieland

In Niagara County, Page’s Kiddyland at Packard and Military first stood to help draw customers to the Simon-Gulf gas station and then the Whistle Pig restaurant.

Pages-Gulf

One of Western New York’s smallest-yet-long-lasting amusement attractions was Dealing’s on Niagara Falls Boulevard near Ellicott Creek Park.

Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Stories archives

The Dealing family first built an elaborately carved carousel on their Niagara Falls Boulevard farm in 1929. After returning from World War II, Earl Dealing added about a half-dozen rides to the one put up by his father. He ran Dealing’s Amusement Park until 1980.

Dealings-ad

Nestled off Main Street in the Village of Williamsville, Harry Altman’s Glen Park Casino is remembered for high-quality musical and Hollywood entertainment and was a regular stop for acts as varied as Sammy Davis Jr. and the Three Stooges. Those too young to remember the music just might remember the rides.

Glen-casino-stooges

Up to 6,000 people or more would fill the tiny park on holidays in the 1960s. The Glen Park Casino, renamed Inferno, burned down in a $300,000 blaze in 1968. The area was developed into a park in 1975.

Glen Park. Buffalo Stories archives.

Glen Park. (Buffalo Stories archives)

Western New York children of the 1970s might remember Fun-N-Games Park just off the Youngmann in Tonawanda.

Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo Stories archives

Another instance of amusement rides in a Twin Fair parking lot, the park’s most memorable feature might have been the unconnected roadside attraction in front of it—the whale car wash.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

The larger parks like Crystal Beach, Fantasy Island and Darien Lake were built and promoted as regional destinations, and likely remembered by almost anyone who grew up in Western New York, but these smaller parks are just as memorable in our own experiences or the stories or our parents and grandparents of days gone by.

Fantasy Island, 1960s. Buffalo News archives.

Fantasy Island, 1960s. (Buffalo News archives)

Buffalo in the ’40s: new $4,800 homes in Williamsville

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Pearce & Pearce built hundreds of homes across Western New York in the years leading up to World War II, and hundreds more in the area’s postwar housing boom.

Thirty homes were ready for completion in July, 1940, including in the North Union/Main, Harris Hill/Main, and Lamarck/Wehrle areas.

13 july 1940 williamsville homes
Buffalo Stories archives

Buffalo in the ’60s: Thumbs up for Williamsville toll move

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Gov. Nelson Rockefeller was expected to sign a measure approving the moving of the Williamsville toll barrier to Depew.

But not so fast. Today, the toll barrier remains where it was in 1969.

However, not all tolls are as they were decades ago. A campaign led by Carl Paladino in 2006 was successful in removing the Ogden and Breckenridge tolls on the Niagara Thruway, saving drivers on the highway at the time $0.75.

April 25, 1969: Move of toll barrier in Williamsville passes Assembly with ease

“The new toll booths would be placed at the ramp leading to Exit 49, Depew. Many commuters from Amherst, Clarence, Lancaster and Cheektowaga thus will be able to reach downtown Buffalo by paying only one 15-cent toll instead of two.”

Buffalo in the ’60s: Realtor fined for acting in ‘racially derogatory manner’

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A couple in Williamsville was denied access to housing because of their race, according to this article in The Buffalo Evening News:

April 21, 1969: Realtor fined $500 on couple’s charge of housing bias

“A Williamsville realty company has been ordered by the State Division of Human Rights to list with a local fair-housing group all housing accommodations as they become available for rent in the next two years and to pay $500 in compensatory damages to a [black] couple.”