By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Of course, following the rail and the streetcar to Parkside soon enough was the automobile. King’s Official Route Book was the Mapquest.com of the early automobile era. It gave new drivers not only street names as far as getting from one place to another, but offered landmarks as well in an era when street signs may not have been the most reliable or varied. In the 1913 edition, the book makes notes of several landmarks you’d see driving on Main Street from downtown through Parkside on your way from Buffalo to Batavia.
Buffalo, N. Y., to Batavia, N. Y.,
38.6 miles, Road mostly all brick and state road.
- 0 Leave Soldiers’ Monument and Park on right, go north on Main St., following trolley .
- 0.7 Pass Teck Theater Bldg. on left
- 2.3 Intersection of trolleys with car barns on right (Cold Springs Street Car Barn)
- 2.6 Passing hospital on right (Sisters Hospital at original Main/Delevan location)
- 2.7 and Forest Lawn Cemetery on left
- 2.8 Pass Carnival Court Park on right (amusement park where Main and Jefferson meet)
- 3.0 St Vincent of Paul’s Church on right (now Canisius College Montante Cultural Center)
- 3.1 Mount St. Joseph Academy on left (now Canisius’ Lyons Hall)
- 3.3 Providence Retreat on right (current site of Sisters Hospital)
- 3.4 U. S. Marine Hospital on right (currently Benedict House)
- 3.5 Deaf Mute Institution on right, straight ahead through
- 3.6 Parkside brick schoolhouse on left ( in current School 54 parking lot)
- 3.8 Central Presbyterian Church on left (now Mt St Joseph’s Academy)
- 3.9 Cross cement bridge over R. R.
Between the businesses in the Parkside neighborhood itself, and the business along Main Street, it was possible, for much of the neighborhood’s history, for someone living in the area to not have need to leave the neighborhood for months at a time.
Without Main Street, there would not have been a Flint Hill or a Parkside. While over the last two decades its become the re-invigorated Hertel and Delaware Avenues that are the local shopping and dining destinations for Parksiders, for the 200 years previous, it was Main Street that served most of the needs of the people of the area we now call Parkside.
Over a three year period, third generation Parkside Resident and Definitive Parkside Historian Michael Riester wrote a series of articles, published in the Parkside News, examining the history Parkside’s portion of Main Street and role the stretch of road played in the life of the people of the area through the two centuries since the path was first carved from the wilderness.
(I)n 1850, the city secured vast tracts of Erastus Granger’s farm on Flint Hill (as Parkside was then known.) This land, with its rolling hills, large open meadows, woods, and Scajaquada Creek was considered the most beautiful and scenic in the area. 80 Acres would become Forest Lawn Cemetery, but the land to the north and west of the then-proposed cemetery, including Granger’s meadow and quarry, would be reserved for parkland. It would be some years yet before the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted would draw on its natural beauty to create Delaware Park. “
By the 1880s, once “The Park” was developed, and the modern streets of Parkside were laid out, the character of Main Street changed dramatically. Large homes, like the brick Victorian of the Garris Family at Main and Robie were being erected. The Garris family made their fortune in the Jammerthal quarries near Grider and Kensington.
This page is an excerpt from
The Complete History of Parkside
by Steve Cichon
The full text of the book is now online.
The original 174-page book is available along with Steve’s other books online at The Buffalo Stories Bookstore and from fine booksellers around Western New York.
©2009, 2021 Buffalo Stories LLC, staffannouncer.com, and Steve Cichon
