Buffalo Rising Online

Nov 3rd 2008, 9:32am By STEEL

As I noted in part one and part two of this series, my early introduction to the city was a kind of a hit and run sampling. Total immersion would not come until our big move to the city's West Side when I was in 7th grade. The West Side I am talking about is now present day Elmwood Village. In those days, there was less differentiation between the east and west side of Richmond Avenue. At the time Elmwood Village was still much more prosperous than west of Richmond but the difference was not as stark as present day. Back then the West Side was on the edge of a precipitous fall, while Elmwood was nearing a tremendous rejuvenation.

Having spent my early childhood in the suburbs, I have some understanding of the (generalized) negative suburban view of the city. My brief experiences on various trips with family ignited a great curiosity about the city, but in my mind it was still a dark scary place. Darkness is what I imagine when I think of my image of the city back then. It was dark, whereas the suburbs were bright. In the suburbs, even spaces between buildings were bright. The paint was bright, the bricks were bright (in the sixties and seventies white and tan was a popular brick color) and the roofs were bright.

I remember frequent trips to my aunt's house on the throughway. Out toward the east in Cheektowaga, there was a vast sea of new ranch-style houses. These, then brand new, houses all had low-slung hipped roofs with very light grey shingles. It is a sight still very vivid in my mind. It was a scene of brightness as the trees were small, casting little shade. All that tan brick and light gray shingle was a vision of perfection to me back then. Little did I know that this vision of perfection was quickly sucking the life from the city that I would soon come to love. Ironically, this neighborhood is now shrouded in a forest of shade trees, the sea of roof tops no longer visible. This neighborhood is now part of the aging and increasingly less desirable inner ring suburbs

When informed that we would be moving to the city I was devastated. I did not want to move and certainly did not want to move to the city. I remember seeing our new street the first time. The houses were dark. Gray and black where common colors back then. There was also a version of green paint that might just as well have been gray. The colorful paint we know today was nowhere to be found. The houses were all big and hulking with narrow, dark alleys between them. Most were in good condition, but the few with poor maintenance seemed to shed their darkness onto the rest. I did not notice the beautiful detail and stunning compositional form of these houses. I just notice that they were very old and very dark.

Upon entry to our new house, my vision of the city changed drastically. This was not a dark place. It was bright and beautiful. The windows were huge, springing directly from the floor and soaring to the ceiling. The front stair had a massive stained glass window and the front room had a beautiful carved fireplace. The third floor (yes third floor) had an apartment and a richly paneled office. It also had a carved fireplace. Its window looked out over our (unusual) side yard to the highrises of Gates Circle beyond. Our dining room had a bay window which also looked out toward Gates Circle. Sitting there and eating with the distant city lights in view was a great experience. I always wondered about all those people eating diner in their elegant apartments. I can't describe how fast I forgot about Lackawanna. I was now a diehard Buffalo city kid.

It did not take me long to start exploring and discovering the wonders of Buffalo. As a kid who was always interested in architecture, I could have received no better gift than to be dropped in the middle of the Elmwood Village. The buildings were no longer dark to me. They shinned with light; everyplace I went was another great thing to find. One day a came across a most unusual sight. Sitting on Bird avenue, where three Olmsted parkways converge, was an apparition of modernity. It was a long low slung house with broad overhanging roofs. I had never seen anything like it and it was nothing like anything around it. My mother informed me that this house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a very famous architect. Someone famous did something in Buffalo? was my first thought. I quickly made my way to the Buffalo State College library (also found on one of my explorations) and looked up everything I could find on Wright. WOW! He did lots of stuff in Buffalo, including the amazing Larkin building! Imagine my disappointment on learning that it had been destroyed. Why would anyone do that? I wondered. That Buffalo State library was a gold mine in itself, by the way. I spent hours there looking up all sorts of stuff all without any questions asked.

My family had bucked the trend and moved INTO the city and my world suddenly opened up in front of me. It was not all about architecture either. There was much to learn about people as well.
Stay tuned for part 4: Public School.