the inquisitive techie

What remains of three city blocks. Most of the remaining houses are abandoned.

Buffalo, NY was a boom town 100 years ago.  The 1901 Pan American Exhibition was held in Buffalo to show off the world’s greatest new advancements including the now affordable mass produced light bulb, and a new generating plant down the road in Niagara Falls.  The Erie Canal had opened the Midwest and the western states to commerce, and the move westward was on.  New neighborhoods sprouted up all around Buffalo, especially on the East Side now brimming with immigrants from Poland, Italy, Germany, and Ireland.  Scores of churches were built, huge churches with great names like Saint Stanislaus, Saint Adalbert’s, and the amazingly beautiful Saint Ann’s on Broadway.

The city grew, and thrived through World War II.  Companies on the East Side, like Curtiss Wright, which made the famous P-40 Warhawk produced over 13,000 of the durable fighters during the war.    The steel industry thrived in Buffalo, as the need for the metal drove the war effort, and new businesses sprouted up all over the area to support it.  Machine shops, equipment dealers, suppliers all popped up on the East Side.  Industry loved the hard working immigrants on the East Side, and many factories were built there just for this reason.

Steel came left town for good, along with most of the rest of the United States during the 70’s and 80’s.  Well paying union jobs left forever too, as companies like Bethlehem Steel and Republic Steel closed their doors and laid off TENS of thousands of men.  As people left town for better opportunities, Buffalo became poorer and poorer, and people fled to the new suburbs in West Seneca, Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, and Amherst.  What was left were the poor, and the  elderly, who were too old to relocate.

There are dozens of abandoned churches in the neighborhood, many as large as Transfiguration RC on Sycamore Street.  Most are ethnically based from the original immigrants that built them, and are very large and ornate.

Crack and other drugs ravaged the remaining neighborhoods throughout the 80’s and 90’s, as poverty became the norm.  What was once a proud immigrant area, was now a battered wreck of broken down houses, burned out deathtraps, and closed storefronts.  In 2007, the city began demolishing houses in large numbers.  An article in the NY Times notes that Mayor Byron W. Brown started a five-year $100 million  plan to rip down 5,000 houses, about half of all the vacant houses in the city.  Buffalo ranks second only to St. Louis in the percentage of vacant properties per capita nationwide.

The only sign of life on this playground is the new nets on the basketball hoops.  There are only a few houses left in this neighborhood, and many have children.  A few haphazard playhouses and slides sit in yards, but not many.

The devastation continues and Mayor Brown recently expanded the demolition program.  Ask any Buffalo fireman what they think of being stationed on the East Side, reporting to arson after arson in dangerous vacant houses, and you will soon understand that these houses cannot stand.  But there is no rescue for them, no bailout for these neighborhoods.  Some new houses dot the area, but they are few and far between. Redevelopment projects that have started with several city blocks, and have created new neighborhoods and communities have fared well.

This is the last house on this block.  I counted 15 lots, or 15 missing houses, to the end of the block.

I cannot help but think of the people that lived in those houses, almost like ghosts they haunt me.  I can imagine the old neighborhoods filled with people, the streets bustling, the busy stores with ethnic names, flowers in the gardens.  That was what the streets looked like here just 30 years ago.  It seems like a lifetime now, with decay, fear, and sadness being the primary decorations on the East Side now.

As I was leaving the city, I saw these deer in what was only a few years ago hundreds of houses.