By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo
Notorious finger amputee, First Ward union and political boss, and Buffalo Courier Publisher William J. Conners – known to Buffalo’s grain scoopers and dock workers as Fingy Conners – lived in what his own newspaper called an “elegantly pretentious mansion,” saying the house at South Park and Tifft was “by far the handsomest and costliest dwelling at South Buffalo.”
There was Conners’ “Columbia Villa” estate, and little else there in 1894.
Tifft Street south of South Park was described as a “picturesque, unimproved dirt road – a miry and murky pathway after a heavy rain storm, and on sunshiny summer days a veritable ‘lover’s lane,’ being narrow and charmingly enclosed on both sides by luxuriant foliage.”
The home of William J. “Fingy” Conners at South Park and Tifft was sold to make way for Holy Family church. The house was moved across Tifft Street and became the first Mercy Hospital.
By the turn of the century, Conners had moved his family from the biggest house in South Buffalo to uptown’s elite Delaware Avenue. He spent at least five years trying to sell the sprawling estate at South Park and Tifft before it was bought by Rev. John Nash and the Catholic Church in 1902.
Holy Family church was built on the spot. The large house that was the centerpiece of “Columbia Villa” wasn’t demolished – it was moved across Tifft Street. In 1904, the house was sold to the Sisters of Mercy to become South Buffalo’s first and original Mercy Hospital.
Msgr. John Nash, left, lays the cornerstone for the current Mercy Hospital.
Both the church and the hospital were a part of the ongoing efforts to develop the part of South Buffalo which had been known simply as Tifft Farm.
“The opening of a much-needed hospital in South Buffalo is of civic interest, as between the Steel Plant hospital and the Emergency Hospital, the distance to be covered has often proved fatal to the person suffering from a serious accident,” reported the Buffalo Catholic Union and Times in 1904.
What had been the Conservatory when the building was the Conners home was the Operating Room when the building became Mercy Hospital.
“The hospital site is well chosen. It is convenient to the street car, and the open country lying on every side not only brings fresh breezes to the invalid, but allows a further purchase of ground before he wide stretch of vacant land (at South Park and Tifft) becomes dotted with dwelling houses and business blocks.”
That wouldn’t happen, though, as plans eventually called for a new, expanded hospital at Cazenovia and Abbott.
At the time the cornerstone was laid at the present hospital site in 1926, more than 9,700 patients had come through the old hospital that was being replaced.
Mercy Hospital ambulance outside the hospital, early 80s.
