Buffalo Rising Online

Oct 21st 2008, 3:27pm By STEEL

As I noted in Part One, this uber-urbanist started out as a suburbanite. Until seventh grade I lived in the Ridgewood Village section Lackawanna. This was a neighborhood built after WWII on the eastern edge of the steel city to house returning vets. After a short rental period my grandfather took advantage of an offer to purchase. He bought a two unit building on Fairdale Road. We lived there next door to my grandparents in what was to me an idyllic place. At night you could see the orange glow of the steel mill to the west but this was not the harsh Lackawanna that people imagined. It was a planned community of multi family buildings ranging from two to four apartments each. They were cheaply built but comfortable. The houses were arranged along a series of roads ringing a central park with a community center. The yards were big and there were countless kids. 2 candy stores and an ice cream stand were nearby and the woods surrounding nearby Smokes Creek offered great childhood adventures.

School was also nearby housed the mildly Art Deco styled McKinley Elementary. I walked there studying every detail of the fairly plain houses along the way. In the sixties a school like this on the eastern side of Lackawanna had no African American students and all the talk among students was of bussing. They were obviously parroting the discussions of the parents but the prospect of something so awful as bussing struck fear in all of us. Many insisted that they would not attend school if bussing was instituted. Bussing brought to all of our minds the images of the riots seen on TV that we all knew to be common in the far off and mysterious city of Buffalo. All in all the neighborhood was nice but offered little for a budding architect like myself to consume. That far off city was scary in my mind but it was a thrilling place to go and I never backed off a chance to accompany a parent or grandparent on trip downtown or to Broadway Fillmore. One very vivid early memory was of the Ellicott Square Building. This building was a bit off the beaten path in that most shopping was further north. One time we got off the bus in front of its highly sculpted Main Street entry. I could not believe the magnificence filling my vision. Every inch seemed covered with incredible detail including stone vines crawling up its huge columns. Before I could take it all in I was quickly whisked away by a parent to whatever errand we were on and for years afterward craved another view of that masterpiece.

Often I would take a jam packed bus to downtown with my grandmother. She did not drive so this was they way we went, passing the massive industrial complexes and slums along the way. I remember seeing a beautiful old brick building being torn down on one trip. It had magnificent arched windows. I just could not understand why you would tear down something with arched windows. I remember a diner we would always eat at. It had a corner revolving door with a thick shinny coat of bright red paint. It was very lively with shoppers and business people. I remember bending my neck to take in the shear cliff like wall of the Liberty building rising off Court Street.

Main Street thronged with people, news stands occupied every corner, and the stores went on and on with great glass windows full of stuff. Downtown was lively in the sixties and even into the seventies but, in my mind the city had a darkness which I can still see. Coal soot still covered many of the old buildings back then giving a grimness to the streets that makes it understandable how people wanted to get rid of the old and bring in the new. I remember my first gimps of the gleaming white M&T Plaza. WOW! Its clean bright white lines shooting straight up were so beautiful. It was so new and fresh. I wanted everything to be modern. At the same time I came to understand the grandeur of old Buffalo. On one city trip my father brought me to the Statler. The outside was dark and forbidding. I thought it looked pretty crummy, certainly no M&T. On entering its marble clad, crystal chandeliered lobby I could not believe my eyes. Columns, arches, color and murals everywhere - was this the same building? The experience was transformative. I had a very similar experience later on when I was first introduced to our new home in the Elmwood Village. (That story for another segment).

These early city experiences are most certainly responsible for setting my love for urban living in stone. Even so, as a child I was not ready to move from my beloved Ridgewood Village. The city was still very strange and forbidding. It was filled with Black people and hippies whom, we were informed via TV, were not up to anything good. Also the city did not have any of my friends. But eventually the time came, we were moving to the city, something few people did back then. This was not good! Or so I thought.

Next up Part 3 - Massive Change