80s Buffalo - Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Main Street in transition, 1981

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This photo of Main Street was snapped just before a handful of 1980s projects would change the thoroughfare’s look and feel forever.

Absent are the MetroRail, the Hyatt, the TGI Friday’s/Comfort Suites building, the former KeyTower and the former Goldome Headquarters (now used by M&T.)

Buffalo News archives

In the very foreground of this section of the larger photo, there’s the two-floor Burger King at Main and Mohawk, and the Century Theatre next door. You can also see some of the storefronts in the ground level of what is now the Hyatt.

This photo shows more of what is now the Hyatt and the beginning of the clearing of buildings for Fountain Plaza on the west side of Main. On the east side, the buildings soon to be cleared for the Goldome headquarters are still intact, as are the buildings which would make way for TGI Friday’s north of Chippewa Street.

The area known for a generation now as the Theatre District was a block more or less in disrepair.

MORE: Buffalo in the ’80s: Pre MetroRail Buffalo

This first appeared at history.buffalonews.com.

Buffalo in the ’80s: Holiday shopping at Hills

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

If you were getting ready for Christmas in 1985, one place you were likely to turn to figure out what you wanted or what you wanted to buy was the weekly Hills ad.

There were eleven Hills location around Western New York in 1984, making the discount retailer just about ubiquitous — and a likely stop for most Western New York shoppers over the 20 years the company operated here.

Buffalo Stories archives

By the time the local Hills stores were bought out by Ames in 1999, there were 10 Hills locations. With a combined 20 stores, Ames closed its local outlets in 2002.

Buffalo in the ’80s: Commissioner and sheriff are bicycle cops for a day

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

t’s the kind of photo op we don’t see as much anymore.

To promote a statewide bicycle safety campaign, Buffalo’s two top cops — City Police Commissioner James Cunningham (white belt) and Erie County Sheriff Kenneth Braun — hopped on a customized bike built for two and rode around Niagara Square.