One by one, we’re going to get writers and photographers who double as food lovers, historians, park aficionados, art geeks, urban explorers and architecture nuts to visit this city so that they may share its treasures with their readers and viewers. Slow and steady wins the race, and after each visitor leaves, we’ll continue to dig in to make the next visit even better. I’m not referring to an activist here and there, I’m talking about a collective of people who are working around the clock to make this city tick once again. Why? People ask me that question all the time. My answer? Simple. Because we live here and we want to live in a place that we are proud of… a place that makes us feel good and offers us the things that we need to be happy. Healthy activities, diverse food, aesthetic beauty, friends and family, four seasons, culture, water… all of the offerings that Buffalo provides us to create a very unique sense of place. Washington Post writer JoAnn Greco understands this, and has shared it with her readers this week. Here’s an excerpt:
Throughout my stay in Buffalo, every time I spied a building that particularly spoke to me — the stolid, orange-hued Dun Building (1895), the charming, light-filled Market Arcade (1892), the stately, porticoed Albright-Knox Art Gallery (1905), the gold-domed, neoclassic Buffalo Savings Bank (1901) — it turned out to be the work of this prolific and stylistically wide-ranging firm.
At its height, Buffalo was able to draw the best architects from across the country to create some of their finest work there. But in the end, it seemed, the quiet standouts were the talented, eclectic and uniquely Buffalonian homeboys. Now that’s what they mean by “sense of place.”
For all of you out there who have ever been involved with a ‘place-making exercise’… it’s working.