Then and Now: This thing was golden.

Just about every high rise downtown (M&T Tower, M&T/Golddome, HSBC Tower, Main Place Tower, Key Towers (Pearl St and Chippewa sides)offer little appeal on street level. Missed opportunities to build good urban density and pedestrian fiendly streetscapes for sure. Tishman Building was a better effort. You wonder how professional planners and architects could have been so clueless

Woke up to a gloomy day, then I saw these photos and I feel gloomier. How sad these diverse styles of architecture have been lost from the fabric of Main Street. I agree not much good came from the 80's in architecture or fashion unless your into shoulder pads and leg warmers.

Maybe its not retro enough to be chic or maybe it is, just as you said, "cartoonish". But I don't want to be so negative today. In retail we used to say, "we own it, we love it", meaning we had to try to sell even the things we didn't think were beautiful. It would be beautiful to someone.

With that said, those buildings are gone and this complex is here, complete, not needing renovation, asbestos abatement, stabilization or a clever idea of what it should be.

I ,for one, will embrace this area of Main street like an awkward teenager needing a hug. Hoping, as we all do sometimes, that as they grow older they will grow into their face. : )

This is a very nostalgic and simplistic view of history and architecture, right down to the memories of a bright eyed teenage STEEL exploring construction sites.

Its one thing to argue for a dense urban fabric without specifying the form that it should take, but its another to say that this fabric must always mimic obsolete building typologies.

Goldome was an unneccessary liquidation in the S&L crisis. Both they and Empire had a real chance of survival but, by the time they reached a crisis point, the FDIC was liquidation crazy. The city may have been a different place and even more of a banking center today had that not happened.

If these buildings could have survived until 2000 then they'd probably be residential by now and would form the missing nexus for Buffalo's downtown residential development. It wasn't to be though and at least they aren't now a vacant lot.

As I recall this was more "politics" than planning. Mayors Griffin and Masiello, abetted by the Greater Buffalo Development Corporation (now BNE), and the Redevelopment Authority usually got whatever they wanted, regardless of any opposition, or advice they may have received from their own (weak) Planning Department.

The Preservation Coalition, and individual architects spoke out against many of these demolitions. But their voices couldn't match the power of ignorant politicians and self-interested institutions.

The Fountain Plaza development is another example. Against the protests of citizens and the preservation community, the irreplaceable art deco WT Grant store was demolished to make way for the bland B of A building.

Looking at this from an outsiders perspective who has never known Main St outside of its current form, I agree that the loss of so many 'taxpayer' style storefronts for a large office building is unfortunate.

But in all honesty if they had stayed they would probably be in no better shape than the existing row of storefronts a block away which if I recall correctly are now under threat of demo due to structural issues owing to several years of inactivity/lack of maintenance.

Downtown cores of cities are usually not the best-preserved places in terms of historic buildings. "Progress" often comes at the expense of smalled plots of land like these.

Regarding this plaza and its counterpart across Main Street, many BR commentators lament the perceived dearth of activity at the street level. I disagree. There is plenty of pedestrian activity in the so called sterile block. Go there any lunch hour. Even in winter. In the summer, the activity isn't limited to lunch hour (nor so for the skating rink in winter).

By contrast, the 600 block (Chippewa to Edward) is mostly wonderfully preserved and restored. There are restaurants, stores and offices, live theaters, a movie theater, residential and even a 100 year old mall. The 600 block mostly looks great from the street. And yet at street level most days the 600 block is a pedestrian dead zone compared to this block. Even on weekends.

Yes, we lost some cool building shells sacrificed to the gods of 1980s and '90s office towers. But even today I'd still make this particular trade.

"The city had little to no culture of urbanism". It may not be the author's intent, but I find that statement a little offensive. It may be or apt to say: The city had little to no contrived culture of urbanism. There is no doubt that this city was decaying, and dying slow death at that time. But, real people still lived and worked here at that time, in numbers that dwarf today's.
Mom never drove. What she couldn't find in our Ken/Bailey neighborhood required a ride to the suburbs or a bus ride downtown. Being an independent sort, the bus ride was usually first choice. She took me to Christmas concerts with the Philharmonic in the BSB lobby. Grandpa walked over from his Delaware Ave. office to meet us. Grandpa, my uncles, and older cousins, many worked downtown. They shopped and ate there too. The men liked Kleinhan's. The more refined women like Berger's. Mom opted for the bargain basement at AM&As as often as not! As I got a little older I shopped downtown too. Cavage's, Ulrich's, Tent City, George & Co., Olson's Electronics, all stops along the road of wish fulfillment for a teenage geek.
I remember what ended it all too. The train. More specifically, the construction period. Construction of the cut & cover and surface sections of the MetroRail blocked up Main street for years. Bus trips downtown for shopping or work became near unbearable and sometimes dangerous. Mom simply stopped going. Others like her followed suit. I've even heard that the number of workers driving (rather than using public transit) to work downtown,actually increased in those years. By the time light rail construction was finished, the slow steady decay of our city, had accelerated into a full on plummet into the abyss.
I grew up around folks doing restoration work on Buffalo's homes and commercial buildings small and large. I loved all those old worn out buildings downtown. They helped fuel my childhood dream of being an architect. All the new, shiny, glass faced ones probably helped to kill that dream too. But, before you start talking about a "culture of urbanism" or the correct density for urban planning, please remember: it was the urban planners that built the metro rail. It was the urban planners that built the Kensington expressway (my family lost their house to that one). It was the urban planners that bulldozed large swaths of most cities in the country in the name of "renewal". Meanwhile, everyday people, living their lives and doing their best, day in and day out, usually asking for nothing, got screwed time and time again by one big, planned, government project after another.

Also, for how great and stimulating build environment is supposed to be there's only four people in all of those pictures combined.

So once again it comes down to architectural design and design codes.

The stewards of this city need to make world class architecture for both modern and period buildings a priority.

Maybe its a 10 year tax credit for an world class architectural period reconstruction or new design.

Maybe its zoning.

On a side note, what really makes late 70's and early 80's pictures look bad are the cars. I'm not sure if it was just a low point in style or if they had real bad paint during that era, but every time I see an image whether it's in Buffalo or Florida the cars look like they've been through war.

Nice pictures, but PLEASE stop lamenting- time to move on Buffalo! Look to the promising future.

Save what you have left and capture images of things that might not even be here six months from now unless you act. Think Trico, Sycamore, Broadway and other surrounding streets still suffering from neglect and sitting empty.

React to the past by positively moving into the future.

At least the architect knew how to specify reflective glass! Anyone know the whole story of the non-reflective reflective glass on the Federal Courthouse? What a disaster! I worked with some people inside the building recently who said the building was a total unneeded waste of money.

At least the architect knew how to specify reflective glass! Anyone know the whole story of the non-reflective reflective glass on the Federal Courthouse? What a disaster! I worked with some people inside the building recently who said the building was a total unneeded waste of money.

The Goldome buiding was designed by Kohn, Pederson and Fox, at the time one of the leading architectural firms in the US. When built, I found it quite amazing and fantastic. It's now in mid-life, the most dangerous period for any building. we have to wait another three decades at least before we can make any sound judgements on its worth.

Should we have kept the old buildings? Perhaps. Could the design have been better? Perhaps. But we have what we have, and I say we must make the most of it. It's not bad design by any means, but I agree that the plaza could be better utlilized.

As always, we should look to William Whyte's comments on how to make a city plaza lively.

Trivia:

The Goldome tower was built with a sweep of glass facing Main and a blank wall facing the East Side. Know why?

It was designed to be doubled. The expectation (prior to the Feds shutting down the bank) was that the bank's growth would continue and the office space would need expansion. The glass wrap around facade facing Main was intended to eventually be mirrored on the back of the building as well, as office space was added to accommodate the growth.

Something that kept coming to mind reading this is that I was told by a preservation person that the adaptive reuse of the Buffalo Savings Bank in the Goldome Plaza project represents some kind of world-class preservation success story (because of the specifics of the adaptive reuse). But when I see the buildings that were taken down for the project, I don't find myself cheering.

I'm curious whether anyone else has heard something like what I heard about the Goldome project. If it's a bogus idea, I'd be glad to divest myself of it!

Does anyone know if 61 Johnson Park is for sale? I'd like to purchase is.

Let's not forget that construction of these two banks (Goldome and Key) were the catalyst for Chippewa to transform. Prior to these two office towers, Chippewa was the red light district. Downtown here was very seedy.

My aunt relocated with National Gypsum to Charlotte NC back in the 70s. When she came home one year and saw those two complexes and the hotel at the corner of Main and Chippewa, she couldn't believe it. When she went home to Charlotte, she told all her Buffalo friends. All were flabbergasted. Chippewa's reputation was so bad no one could believe there was actually a new hotel on Chippewa Street of all places. It shocked them (But then, again, National Gypsum's headquarters were on Delaware between Chippewa and Tupper. These people knew Chippewa).

My friends and I graduated high school way back in 1978. The drinking age was 18. I remember coming down to Chippewa to look at the hookers as a high school senior. We were a carload of white kids from Cheektowaga. If you kept your windows were open, the girls would walk up to the car at a stop light, start a conversation, reach in and tease a little . . . try to make a sale, then we'd skedaddle after the daring escapade of actually having conversed with a real life prostitute . . . And they were all over. Tens of girls within a couple blocks, not one or two.

Anyway, Chippewa's reputation was bad. Everybody knew it was the red light district and had been for a long time. Mark Goldman deserves a ton of credit for pioneering the Calumet. But the Calumet (and the 600 block of Main) could never have taken off without those two silver bullets (Key and Goldome). And even though the second Key Tower stood a vacant shell for a decade, those two bullets did work for downtown. They really expanded the frontier.

Re: Main Street feeling like a “walking dead or nuclear holocaust movie” especially after 5 p.m. or on weekends.

Recently, a commenter provided often overlooked insight on the scarcity of people on Main Street after 5 p.m.

Downtown Main Street and nearby streets significantly consist of businesses/offices which are open Monday through Friday (and essentially 9 am to 5 pm). A cursory look at the "33" and exit streets from downtown around 5 pm shows that most office workers don't linger. They are in a hurry to get home.

Office spans, even in larger cities, are not booming with life after office hours or on weekends. That includes Toronto.