Buffalo’s early power was in its banks

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Thirty-five years ago this month, The News began celebrating the 100th anniversary of the paper starting a daily edition.

In the special section called One Hundred Years of Finance and Commerce, The News recounted the history of a handful of Buffalo’s financial and commercial industries, and provided ad space for many companies involved in those industries to tout their own contributions.

In 1980, many of the big names in Buffalo banking — Marine Midland, M&T, Western, Buffalo Savings, and Liberty — all would have been familiar to Buffalonians 100 years before.  Thirty-five years later, only M&T remains.

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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.