I thought I would get back into posting neighborhood slideshow
tours. These slideshow posts are the best way to show off the city’s
architectural grandeur because they show buildings in context. Great
cities are not composed solely of masterpieces but are mostly made up of simple,
everyday, high quality buildings that work together creating great space for
human activity. One of these great places is Buffalo’s West Village.
The West Village neighborhood occupies a small wedge of streets
between the Lower West Side and Downtown. It is possibly Buffalo’s oldest
neighborhood and is also possibly one of the most important neighborhood efforts to restore the city’s health. The
neighborhood was originally laid out as the Village of Black Rock. Its
street grid hits streets laid out for the Village of New Amsterdam (later
Buffalo) at an angle creating interesting urban accidents of geometry. The
focal point of the neighborhood is Johnson Park. I believe that this was
Buffalo’s first park (home site of Buffalo’s first Mayor). The park was
later redesigned by Olmsted. It is bordered by a wonderful collection of
Victorians along with a couple of apartment buildings and the newly renovated
Hutch Tech High School. For more on Johnson Park and the West Village, go
here.
The West Village is densely filled with an architecturally
diverse collection of buildings. At the same time, the neighborhood has a
real sense of unity. As a neighborhood, it is unique in Buffalo because it is
almost completely composed of brick. In spite of being in the shadow of
downtown high rises and in direct relationship to a highly impoverished
neighborhood, this part of the city is remarkably intact. In fact it is
the only intact 19th century neighborhood remaining that directly borders
downtown. For this reason it is
very important to Buffalo’s growth. Cities need dense neighborhoods to
feed their prosperity and cities with lively downtown districts always have
direct relationships to unique and prosperous neighborhoods. The West
Village can be a bulwark to spread growth into the lower west side. The
continued renewal of the West Village combined with similar renewal in the
Kleinhans neighborhood a few blocks north offers potential to create a critical
mass of prosperity in Buffalo’s inner city core.
Today, the West Village has been making steady progress toward
being a premier place to live in Buffalo. Dedicated residents have been diligent in
fighting the effects of concentrated poverty in and around the neighborhood. They
have worked to restore Johnson Park and have fought the relentless and
destructive force of poorly managed rental properties. Though the
challenges are many, they pale in comparison to past years when the state
planned a highway connection at
the north edge of the area and when few realized or cared about the historic
and architectural significance of the neighborhood. In past decades the
West Village suffered all the ills of other aging inner city neighborhoods used
as holding pens for poverty. Early urban developers in the 1970’s saw
potential in the area and began simple renovations of several of the small
apartment buildings. They were developed as affordable housing but
probably saved this important piece of Buffalo heritage. Restoration of many
single-family homes soon followed. In 1980 the neighborhood was placed on the
National Register of Historic Places. Today, many new high profile developments
have been completed or are on-going in the vicinity. The new Avant
building promises to bring million-dollar plus apartments to the eastern edge
of the neighborhood. This all bodes well for the West Village and the city. So
with that, please enjoy the slideshow, but try and walk these streets in
person. These pictures don’t do this part of the city justice.
The music included here is by Sam Beam of Iron and Wine with Calexico. It took
many listens before it failed to bring a tear to my eye. Thankfully, this music
is not representative of the current state of this neighborhood.