Join a club and save a city.
I was recently driving around the East Side of Buffalo, something I have rarely done. I wanted to get a close up look at Humboldt Parkway since I had recently written about its destruction to make way for the Scajaquda Expressway. I started at Main and drove along the upper (local) level, which I believe is still mockingly called Humboldt Parkway. I made my way along the gentle curve of the former parkway, then up into Martin Luther King Park. I circled its giant fountain (though recently restored it was not running), passed in front of the imposing facade of the Science Museum, then down Best Street back deep into the heart of the city's neighborhoods through a maze of one way streets that traverse a gently rolling landscape still packed densely with houses. My journey ended at the Hauptman Woodward Institute.
This is an area of the city that few people other than its own residents know anything about. In the minds of most Western New Yorkers it is a dark and dangerous place. This impression is reinforced every night on TV news as reporters document the poverty, murder, and arson that plague this large chunk of city land. Indeed, my East Side tour revealed the results of massive disinvestment and concentrated poverty. There are abandoned properties, large areas of vacant land where people once made their lives, and trash, lots of trash. None of this was unexpected. But, that is not all I saw.
Though the sinister reputation of the East Side is not entirely undeserved it is not a monolithic place. It can vary greatly from street to street and has many many citizens who work hard for what they have and do what anyone does to make a decent place for their families. I saw many streets filled with well kept houses and yards. These streets could fit easily into any of Buffalo's most successful neighborhoods. These are streets most people would be proud to live on. To be sure, decent streets and individual home owners on the East Side carry a burden that is not born by Buffalo's wealthiest neighborhoods (at least not to such a great extent). That burden is the crushing poverty that surrounds them. Still even in the face of tremendous negativity there are those who believe in the East Side and are determined to stay the course. These people are rarely if ever documented in the local media.
All this brings me to the point of this story. On my drive west along Best Street I caught sight of a small sign at the corner of Timon. It was advertising the Timon/Best Block Club. Timon Street, if you have never seen it, is (in my opinion) one of the top 10 most beautiful streets in Buffalo. It is made up of modest, though substantial, two flats on a red brick street lined with (sycamore?) trees forming a thick green canopy overhead. The deep shade and dappled sun light on the red brick pavement is nothing short of stunning. It is one of those well maintained streets I was talking about.
But, it goes beyond that. It is also a magnificent urban architectural space. The kind of space that creates a sense of place, a place that is special and memorable. The cars in the driveways suggest an affluence well above the surrounding neighborhood (though this is not a wealthy street). There are no abandoned houses, no gang bangers, no vacant lots, and no trash collecting at the curb. The sign at the corner is a statement of unity. It says that the people of Timon Street stand together and that they are here to stay. It says they work together to keep this beautiful piece of the city for themselves, for those like me who discover it, and for future generations. It says we care.
There may be many more block clubs like this that form a bulwark against the ignorance and disinvestment that is bred by poverty in the inner city. If you look at the East Side as a monolith of rot, crime and poverty you can only imagine a continual downward trajectory. This street and others like it on the East Side and groups like the Timon/Best Block Club give me great hope that there is a positive future for this part of the city. These people, taking matters into their own hands, can make a difference. The results of their efforts are evidence that the problems of the East Side may not be so overwhelming that there can't be dramatic positive change in the near future.
I am not a pollyanna and don't want to sound like I think the solution to the problems of this largely devastated area are simple. But with places like Timon Street and the residents it has attracted the city has something to build onto and outward from. It is a starting place that must be taken advantage of. Groups like these need support and encouragement. Timon street also speaks of the power of great spaces and quality architecture. People are attracted to quality environments and will be willing to stand up in the face of great hardship to protect these places. This is why it is so important to stand up for and fight to save Buffalo's valuable high quality and irrepelcable urban fabric and to support the people willing to fight for these spaces. Thank you Timon / Best Block Club and the other groups like it!
Note:
I could not find any information about this group and would like to write more about them. If anyone has any information please feel free to add it here.http://
Were the houses fairly large, or were they smaller cottages? Generally speaking, it seems like streets on the East Side where the houses are more substantial, and built in more of a Queen Anne-ish style, held up much better through the years than those lined with telescoping story-and-a-half cottages built by first generation German and Polish immigrants.
In the neighborhoods of East Cleveland, an almost exclusively African-American suburb of Cleveland considered one of Ohio's most distressed communities, streets lined by larger single-family and two-family houses (mainly south of Euclid) held up well, while blocks with a housing monoculture of smaller two-flats live up to that city's negative reputation.
Great story Steel. Their are indeed many great streets in the East Side of Buffalo that are not ever mentioned, almost a big kept secret. Untill we reconize this and visit this part of town more often, it'll stay a big secret and will make it harder to redevelope this side of town.
Transformative cities don't describe themselves by four sides, but rather by distinct neighborhoods with qualities that make them unique. Real or perceived, the longer the term Eastside is used to describe everything on 'that' side of Main Street, the longer Buffalo will languish while we let our pre-conceived notions hide the true nuansces that exist in the community.
Thanks STEEL, for shedding light on a special Buffalo neighborhood.
Action Step: I would like to see a definative neighborhood map that could be used to name place around each of Buffalo's neighborhoods. We would all be more informed if we seperated our discussions of Hamlin Park from Kensington, rather than lazily labeling them all Eastside.
Great observation Fancy.
Realtors have known this for a long time and have been kown to create neighborhood names and to stretch the boundaries of good neighborhoods as a way to increase property values. As a matter of fact when I was young the Elmwood Village was known simply as the West Side or once in a while Delaware District.
Good story....it's funny, though, how often we bemoan the fact that outsiders have the "wrong" impression of Buffalo and yet we, ourselves, have certain impressions of our own city.
Want to see more of the REAL neighborhoods and the people who call them home east of Main Street? (FancyWow's point about calling half of the city the "east side" is a good one) The next 2 Sundays will have the Pine Grill Reunion at Martin Luther King Park. What will you see there? Fantastic jazz, family reunions, great food, smiling faces enjoying summer in the city....I just hope we see faces of all colors! What a great way to start to bring this city together, east, west, and everything in between!
Steel--thanks for a sensitive and illuminating article, by far the best one I have seen on BRO in a long time. You've caught the ambiance of parts of the East side that few even try to imagine. The Buffalo News usually doles out stale tabloid stories about this vast and diverse area. It's good to see someone writing about the aesthetic and emotional impression of these streets, full of fine houses, valiant people, and that peculiar and haunting Buffalo mood.
I have to recommend David Torke's East Side bicycle tour, the Tour de Neglect. Follow the link below for full information.
Fix Buffalo Tour de Neglect
Through that tour I learned a lot more about the East Side. The opportunity to see so much with my own two eyes was invaluable. You are able to see and understand a lot more from a bicycle than you can from a car. For me it was an amazing experience and a great insight into our city.
Like Steel, I was tired of relying on myth and mystery for my understanding of the East Side. I feel that in order to know what is best for Buffalo you have to be familiar with All of the city, especially the vast East Side. I had thought of taking a bicycle ride east, and the Tour de Neglect provided me a knowledgeable guide, and a great group of people to ride with.
The last tour this summer is Saturday September 2nd, start at Main St. and Coe Pl. at 11:00am.
You can see some of my pictures from the tour here
East Side Photos
FancyWow,
The map you alluded to in your post already exists.
http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/asl/maps/buf/buffalo_neighborhoods.html
Although it is not perfect, it's not too bad.
Timon Street is an absolutely beautiful street. It's subjective of course, but I'd say putting it in anything less than the top 5 is a disservice. If you care about urban streetscapes you have to get over and check it out.
To get a better idea of how this street has the "tree canopy" that defined so many Buffalo streets (before dutch elm decimated them), I took a google map screenshot of a Timon block:
http://img158.imageshack.us/img158/6185/timonjw0.jpg
Notice how all you see is dense green and no asphalt. Timon st. is an amazing preservation of the "City in a Forest" that Buffalo used to be.
ATOMIZER! : great start and thanks for the link, but i think it also illustrates my point to some degree, with large scattered swaths connected under the 'East Side' banner versus the nuansced specificity of North Buffalo. That just doesn't seem right to me, unless we are all content with just half a New Buffalo????
I'd love the historians on this site to further define these neighborhoods (if a name exists), otherwise I'd love to see the community or Strategic Planning take on the task of better defining these places, rather than fall victim to the ill-fitting, one-size fits all East Side label. It carries such a deep connotation through out Western New York, that the less it is evoked, the greater the chance someone will stumble upon the Science Museum, or Timon Street and like it for what it is, not where they think it is.
Atomizer, I have visited the website of Buffalos neighborhoods but you neglected to tell the readers whether the section of Timon was in the larger Eastside District or Polonia.
Thanks for another great article on Buffalo's Eastside. I called the GBNRTC and they are doing their long range planning and I mentioned that people would like to see the Kensington decked over and Humboldt Parkway returned along with ending the Kensington at Best or Jefferson and downgrading it to a Parkway entrance to the city with more traffic on local streets. More traffic on local streets means more businesses and more more stable neighborhoods. He said he would mention it in the plan and try to get it included.
But he did mention that the decade long plan for the Science Museum on Best Street to deck over the Kensington as part of their expansion has been approved.
So Id like to say to any interested...
1) become a member of the Science Museum and tell them you support decking over the Kensington
2) call the GBNRTC and tell them you support decking over the Kensington and ending the Kensington at Best or Jefferson.
3) notice how the trees add actual dollar value to the community! A strong message here to Buffalonians: "If you love Buffalo, then plant a tree"
4) lets also expand our cobblestone initiative to historic streets on the eastside and westside. These cobblestone streets slow traffic and make streets safe for kids and slow traffic also means the neighborhood is a island in a city. Theres not going to be any gangs or dealers racing down a cobblestone street without losing their suspension after a few blocks LOL.
5) You know what I think would be awesome for this area. If the German Roman Catholic Orphanage was rebuilt as an apartment complex!
6) and lets not forget the possibility of connecting Masten Park, City Fields and MLK Park which are only a few blocks from each other. The city could do worse than donate all those empty lots to the Olmstead Conservancy.
Well just a few ideas to make the eastside better and Steel you are very right....its incredible to drive thru Buffalos various neighborhoods and find that there are some incredible gems scattered throughout the city.
There are many hidden treasures on the East Side,I find that many people have so many misconceptions and do not realize the East Side includes many areas including the Schiller Park area, The Hamli Park area, The Kensington area among the areas as well known as the fruit belt, the Broadway/Fillmore area home of the Famous Broadway Market & the beautiful Central Terminal , The Masten district soon to be home to the Artspace project and the new Performing Arts school,
The East Side has alot of terrific buildings and people who care for their neighborhoods
Dan, the main reason that Queen Annes survived better than worker cottages is because the Queen Annes have basements and most of the cottages do not.
Other than that, one sees the same range of shoddy to sturdy workmanship in both typologies.
If more people don't know about Timon street I'm surprised, if only because it's like 3 blocks from the 33. My friends would drive past it almost every day on their way to UB from the Allentown/Elmwood area and remarked on the trees more than once.
The Tour d Neglect passes right by Timon Street where it crosses Dodge.
The German Roman Catholic Orphan Home that "L" mentions - again - is the first stop on the tour, a few blocks away from Timon Street.
Steel...another great post...
The Tour passes right past Timon Street at Dodge. A few blocks away is the German Roman Catholic Orphan Home that "L" mentions - again.
David C....thanks for the kudos...and David S...great post, again!