By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
The Niagara Falls Motel, 8710 Niagara Falls Blvd., Niagara Falls
At the beginning of the automobile age, “The Buffalo-Niagara Falls Boulevard” was created out of already existing streets and a handful of new connections to make it easier for motorists to travel north from Buffalo and south from Niagara Falls without getting lost.
Planners might not have realized it, and it might not have been their intention, but they were creating one of Western New York’s first planned highways.
In 1913, when the last segment — the still-brick portion from Main Street to Kenmore Avenue— was completed, Buffalonians looking to make a buck began promoting how it was to “automobile” between downtown Buffalo and the cataract.
Built with Western New Yorkers in mind, Niagara Falls Boulevard helped make the daytrip from Buffalo far easier and more pleasurable. Buffalo’s Hotel Lenox was taking out ads in Central New York newspapers, offering travel information for “the Boulevard” in 1919.
Buffalo’s AAA Club painstakingly marked the road to make it ready to drive, but for most of the trip in those earliest days, farm lands were the only scenery. But with an easier means to travel there and more people doing so, development sprouted — from housing developments like Delawanda Park in Tonawanda, to the restaurants, lodging and amusements used by motorists.
Map of Delawanda Park development, between Delaware Avenue and Niagara Falls Boulevard, 1912.
As Niagara Falls became “the mecca of American tourism,” the Boulevard and the attempt to lure cash through hospitality grew.
At first, it was places like the Blue Star or Quinn’s Motor Court, which offered drivers a place to stay in individual cabins.
Quinn’s Motor Court, US-62, mid-1940s.
By the 1950s, the trip from downtown Buffalo to Niagara Falls on Niagara Falls Boulevard and Pine Avenue included more motels with more neon signs than almost anywhere else in the country — “the largest motel area outside of Miami Beach,” according to one promoter of the strip.
All the trappings of a now lost era of roadside Americana thrived through Amherst, the Tonawandas, Wheatfield, Niagara and into the City of Niagara Falls. The flash of neon seemed endless between the motels, drive-in theaters, miniature golf parks and gleaming glass-enclosed hot dog and hamburger stands.
While appealing to sightseers and travelers, they also existed for the locals and mixed with brand-new post-war trappings of suburbia like shiny new NuWay and A&P supermarkets and mind-boggling huge discount stores like Twin Fair and Two Guys.
It was a spectacular ride, sitting wide-eyed in the back seat of a station wagon, taking in the kind of Atomic Age glitz you might not have back home.
The lodging evolved as the tourists did. The longtime “Honeymoon Capital of the World” was rapidly becoming a family destination, which meant fewer “Lover’s Suites” and more swimming pools.
But as quickly as it came, it started to falter. Even in the early ’60s, the decline of Niagara Falls Boulevard and Pine Avenue as the main gateway to the Falls was evident.
Some motel owners thought they had caught a break when the New York Central ended the “Honeymoon Express” train to the Falls in 1961 — meaning more people might drive the Boulevard to get there — but it didn’t happen.
Changes in accessibility and parking at the state parks in 1959 and 1960 were bringing in more than three times the visitors in 1961, but at the same time, business at Niagara Falls Boulevard motels was down 44%.
Both the increases and the decreases were blamed on the newly completed Thruway.
“We feel that the main reason for the decline in our business is actually the progress of the century — that is, the superhighway,” said George Kocsis, a director of the Niagara Frontier Businessmen’s Association.
But what seemed good for Niagara Falls seemed bad for Niagara Falls Boulevard.
Motel owners asked that signs pointing to the Peace Bridge and Rainbow Bridge be replaced with signs pointing motorists to U.S. shopping and motel areas.
A few years later, Falls tourism officials asked for the signs to be changed again, “so that tourists don’t get the idea that Niagara Falls Blvd. is the fastest way to the falls.” They also asked that the 15-cent toll at Black Rock and the 25-cent toll on the Grand Island Bridge be scuttled so that visitors could zip right into Niagara Falls.
The owner of the Boathouse Restaurant on Pine Avenue in the Falls told the Niagara Gazette his business peaked in 1957, and had dropped 20% over the next four years.
“For a while, nobody put a nickel in this place,” one businessman told the Gazette in 1961, speaking of Niagara Falls in general. “People were coming anyway and businessmen just took in the money, not doing anything to improve the area or their facilities,” he said. “Now they’re paying the price.”
Year by year, the old motels along Niagara Falls Boulevard and their old neon signs fade into memory, with little pause for reflection on the flashy excitement the tired and broken landmarks once represented.
