What it looked like Wednesday: Tonawanda’s Young Street

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Why this photo was taken in the first place is a mystery. Even exactly when it was taken is unknown. Looking at it today, probably 35 years after the shutter snapped, shows plenty of little differences between the Young Street of the ’70s and the Young Street of today.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

Just to be clear, that’s the corner of a Fotomat in a Twin Fair parking lot. Off in the distance, the beloved and warmly remembered whale car wash. All three of these landmark features were gone by the mid-’80s.

What it looked like Wednesday: Braves vs. Warriors at the Cow Palace

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

When the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Golden State Warriors to win the NBA Championship in Oakland’s Oracle Arena a few weeks ago, the scene looked every bit the part that modern sports fans would expect of the multi-billion-dollar NBA of 2016.

Buffalo News archives

Buffalo News archives

When the Buffalo Braves traveled to the Bay Area to play the San Francisco Warriors in 1970, the home court at the Cow Palace—built as an agriculture and livestock pavilion—was lit, in part, by Liberace-looking chandeliers.

The photo shows Mike Silliman of the Braves trying to drive past the Warriors’ Joe Ellis as future Hall of Famers Nate Thurmond and Jerry Lucas look on. The Warriors beat the expansion Braves 123-108 under the light of that candelabra fixture.

What it looked like Wednesday: Walden at Union, around 1958

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

This aerial view of Walden at Union might have been taken in 1958 with a handful of other aerial photos of that same area with the date stamped on them.

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Buffalo News archives

Decades before the building of the Walden Galleria, Cheektowaga High School is perhaps the easiest landmark to identify. The on- and off-ramps of the Thruway on Walden at the bottom of the photo help situate the rest of the photo, as well.

Just on the right edge of the page, east of the Walden/Union intersection, is the longtime home of Brand Names.

Off in the distance, the Twin Drive-In and Twin Fair, both of which closed in 1982, can be seen at the corner of Walden and Dick.

The Google image shows the same area, turned 90 degrees, today.

What it looked like Wednesday: Guercio’s, Grant Street, 1985

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

Any of us who have spent time away from Buffalo have our rituals when we return to Western New York. Loganberry. Wings. Super Mighty. Hot dogs (Texas hots). Hot dogs (Char-broiled). Hot dogs (so long as it’s a Sahlens).

Guercio & Sons’ Grocery during a construction project on Grant Street in 1985. (Buffalo News archives)

Aside from — you know — seeing mom, many of our immediate “musts” revolve around food. One stop for many who grew up in or have roots on Buffalo’s West Side, one stop combines food and family.

The mention of Guercio’s can fill a West Sider with a yearning for the pungent aromas of cheese and pickles and cured meats. It’s the type of old-world store which barely exists anymore, making a visit to Grant Street special whether you’re coming from Amherst or the Carolinas.

Guercio’s was known as the Grant Street Market in the days before Vincent and Nancy Guercio came to Buffalo from Sicily in 1954. They bought the place in 1961, and in 1967, the name was officially changed to Guercio & Sons.

Guercio & Sons has been a bastion for the ingredients that make food Italian, and for generations the shop has made the experience of buying those ingredients part of the experience of being an Italian in Buffalo or a West Sider or just someone who appreciates great food and great service.

From the fruit and vegetables displayed on the sidewalk to the cheese and meat counter inside, Guercio’s is a throwback without feeling like an anachronism. Even if you’ve never been there before, somehow walking in, it feels like it’s already etched in your DNA. It’s one of those places you can take your grandkids to.

While it’s the nonnas and bambinos who are mostly likely to wax poetic about Guerico & Sons, it’s the newer Buffalonians hailing from Africa, Asia and Latin America who make up more and more of the everyday neighborhood shoppers there. This is the wonderful little store for current West Siders, just like it was for a previous generation or two.

Neither Grant Street nor the entire West Side have too many institutions that help bridge the gap between yesterday’s West Side and today’s West Side. At Guerico’s, there really hasn’t been a yesterday and today, just a long-standing commitment to being the kind of place that feels right for anyone who walks in.

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Main & Ferry in the late 1980s

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

The character of the Main and Ferry intersection has changed dramatically over the last decade after years of neglect.

Buffalo News archives

The building with the whited-out windows was left in dire condition after a fire in the 1970s. It was left dormant and unoccupied until Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) conducted a six-year, $2.9 million project to use the structure as its headquarters. The 1884 building designed by George J. Metzger was rededicated in 2012.

The building that was home to M&G Food Market in the late ’80s, and later to Elwassem’s Food Market, is now home to Nick Sinatra’s redeveloped Fenton Village. 

Buffalo News file

And across Main Street, the latest development proposed for the corner is the $26 million Willoughby Exchange. It will replace, in part, the longstanding Willoughby Insurance building.

Derek Gee/News file photo

Famous for the motorcycle on the roof and the “Willoughby Will When Nobody Will” slogan painted on the side, the insurance company headquarters building started its life as an H. Salt Fish and Chips restaurant.

What It Looked Like Wednesday: The cottages of then-Squaw Island

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

In 2015, Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown dashed off his signature and Squaw Island was no more. This was the second time the City of Buffalo erased some piece of the island from the map.

The word “squaw” was considered racist and a slur on indigenous women, so it was removed from the name of the garbage-dump-turned-park last year and the new name of Unity Island was adopted.

The last time the city pulled out its eraser, it was to take out the streets upon which 85 cottages and homes stood as recently as the mid-1960s.

At the time of the name change, some of the more ancient history was discussed. That the Senecas called it Divided Island, because of the marshy creek that split it in two. That French explorer LaSalle’s men named it “Squaw Island” in 1679. That it was a staging ground during the War of 1812, and it was from there that British warship HMS Detroit was burned.

Not widely mentioned were the thousands of people who lived there — in some cases squatted there — all the way up until the 1960s. Great Buffalo characters like Jason Thorp, known as the “Hermit of Squaw Island.” Described in one newspaper account as “A Thoreau with a different plan,” Thorp was a veteran of the Civil War, a jeweler and an inventor. After a woman broke his heart in Ohio, he moved to Buffalo, dropped out of society and eventually built his shack on Squaw Island, where he lived for about 20 years, his flowing white beard down to his waistline. It was “the beard of a patriarch,” it was written in a New York paper after his death, “a magnificent looking man of a lofty appearance.”

Buffalo Stories archives

The hermit was not alone. Boathouses, fishermen’s huts, shanties and even several beer rooms serving fish fries — notably John O’Connell’s hotel — dotted the island. The only time these folks were ever seemingly given any attention is when someone bought some piece of land and tried to have the residents thrown out as squatters, when the place became a stop-over for smugglers or those trying to enter the country illegally, or when there was a fire.

A Customs agent was shot on Squaw Island in 1872 by a silk and whiskey smuggler. A few years later, three “contraband Mongolians” made their way to the U.S. via Squaw Island. Opium made its way over Squaw Island as well, 50 pounds one Sunday afternoon in 1897 by “China men from Canada.”

Buffalo News archives

In 1922, 35 families who had lived on the island’s federally owned dike were ordered out. The residents said having lived there for 20 uninterrupted years should give them the right to stay. A judge eventually agreed they had the right to stay.

Eventually, the City of Buffalo purchased a large tract on the island as a sewage and garbage dump, even as people continued to live simple lives there. After several decades, when the dumps began to fill, one Buffalo Common Council member suggested that the city take a close look at the “squatters’ cottages at the north end of the island,” saying the land could provide for an area to expand the dump and incinerator.

“If we kicked those people out of there,” said Councilman William Lyman, “we could continue to dump for another 15 years.”

Buffalo News archives

That’s exactly what happened. Starting in 1963, the last of the unhappy 115 residents of Squaw Island were evicted by the city. “To start with,” Gus Sturms told a City Hall meeting, “We’re not squatters. We pay the city $225 a year. It’s very insulting to pay rent and be called a squatter.”

Buffalo News archives

One resident called the place a poor man’s paradise, since many of the cottages were only used during the summer months for families or during fishing season.

Note the International Rail bridge in the background. (Buffalo News archives)

Residents pointed to a 1946 agreement leasing the plots to them, but the city law department called the agreements invalid. The islanders vowed to fight, and they did for two years. In July 1966, the Squaw Island Association had $44.80 left in its treasury and used it for a blowout party to say goodbye to the only homes many of them had ever known.

And so ended a chapter on a unique, forgotten Buffalo neighborhood.

What it looked like Wednesday: Your Host, inside and out

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

At its height in the mid-’60s, there were 31 Your Host restaurants across Western New York. These were generally cleaner, newer and brighter than the older Buffalo chain restaurants like Deco they were slowly replacing.

Buffalo News archives

Your Host started with a hot dog stand on Delaware Avenue in Kenmore in 1944 by Alfred J. Durrenberger Jr. and Ross T. Wesson. Durrenberger built the company into the large restaurant chain generations of Western New Yorkers remember. A sign of the restaurants popularity and success: When Durrenberger died in 1968, he left an estate valued at $4.5 million.

But after 49 years in business, just as Your Host had replaced Deco, Your Host was being replaced by more convenience-based coffee shops and fast-food restaurants.  The last 11 stores closed and the company filed for bankruptcy in 1993.

As Your Host liquidated, several locations were sold intact and continue to operate as restaurants similar in manner and menu to Your Host, including one on Delaware Avenue near Sheridan Drive, where the biggest change was taking the “Y” off the sign. The place operated as “Our Host” for years.

Buffalo News archives

The others were opened up to the auction block. A few weeks after its griddle was turned off for the last time, Cash Cunningham visited this Your Host location at Main and Tupper, to auction off kitchen equipment, classic diner booth seating, and even the cash register.

 

Buffalo News archives

 

What It Looked Like Wednesday: British monarchs at Niagara Falls, 1939

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

You can tell this is an old photo of foreign tourists at Niagara Falls because there are no selfie sticks.

Buffalo News archives

King George VI (third man from the right) and Queen Elizabeth (with hat) didn’t need to take their own photos — thousands of images were snapped of their visit to North America in 1939. The man standing next to the queen is Mackenzie King, who spent most of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s as Canada’s prime minister.

This woman in the hat, known later to us as the “Queen Mum,” is the Queen Elizabeth whose name we invoke when talking about how to drive to Toronto or Niagara-on-the-Lake. The parents of the current Queen Elizabeth inaugurated the highway and dedicated the stone pillar entranceway in St. Catharines on this trip.

In Niagara Falls, the king and queen dedicated the Rainbow Bridge even though it wasn’t quite finished.

The Royal Tour continued from the Niagara Region through Western Canada, before George and Elizabeth’s North American trip ended with a visit to New York City and Washington, D.C., and a visit to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A journey filled with firsts, it wasn’t only the first time a British monarch had visited the United States — it was also the first time a king or queen had visited Canada.

What It Looked Like Wednesday: Grocery shopping at Elmwood and Summer

By Steve Cichon
steve@buffalostories.com
@stevebuffalo

A new shopping plaza on Elmwood Avenue brought the ease of modern supermarket shopping to the families of that part of 1960s Buffalo — and shoppers have been on a ride ever since.

Buffalo News archives

Now a Price Rite Market, the store first opened as Loblaws in 1961. It became Bells in the 1970s, then Quality Markets when the Bells chain was sold in 1993. Quality closed 10 years later, and Latina’s opened and closed within a decade. Price Rite opened there in 2008.