What it Looked Like Wednesday: The changing look of Delaware Avenue

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Continuing our weeklong look at Delaware Avenue, today we look at several photos that show Buffalo’s traditionally most-aristocratic street resplendent in the trappings of eras gone by.

The still-standing home of Edward Butler, publisher of The Buffalo Evening News, at Delaware and North. (Buffalo Stories archives)

The northwest corner of Delaware at Allen. The building that is now the headquarters for Gurney, Becker, and Bourne was built in 1961.


Some scenes don’t look too much different, save the make and model of the vehicles more than a century later. Others are completely of another time.

A Sunday morning at Gates Circle, around 1900.


This is a turn of the century look at Temple Beth Zion and the 20th Century Club. The temple burned in 1961, the 20th Century Club remains strong and active.


Delaware and Virginia looking north, the second house in on the left belonged to Mark Twain.


Photography of the first decade of the 1900s was not prepared for the great speeds of the automobile—which often reached up to 15 to 10 miles an hour on city streets.


At the northeast corner of Delaware and Barker, a nine-story $500,000 luxury apartment building was going up next to the Bishop Fallon faculty house in 1962.


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Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.