Buffalo: A Waterfront City Transformed

One of the most important and productive cities in 19th- and 20th-century America, Buffalo was the nation s eighth-largest city in 1900 and the largest grain port in the world. The city was the easternmost U.S. port on the Great Lakes and a thriving intermodal center. Here, lake ships exchanged cargoes with Erie Canal boats, and grain from the Midwest and Canada s Prairie Provinces was milled and shipped as flour, cereal, and livestock feed to markets in the northeastern United States and Europe. With the nation s first system of parks and parkways, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Buffalo was both an industrial powerhouse and an urban landscape of uncommon grandeur and beauty. The Pan-American Exposition of 1901 presented the wonders of contemporary technology in an enchanted setting that showcased Buffalo s wealth, industrial power, and its proximity to the wonders of hydroelectric power generated at Niagara Falls through a dazzling display of incandescent lighting on towers, buildings, fountains, and waterfalls. The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 enabled Great Lakes shipping to pass down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic, bypassing Buffalo via the Welland Canal, and the city s fortunes began a precipitous decline. The economic and social problems faced by many northeastern industrial cities, as well as foreign competition in steel and automobiles and the passing of the age of heavy industry, acutely affected Buffalo and its viability as a center of manufacturing and transportation. Yet, throughout the dark days of the mid to late 20th century, Buffalo s preeminence in the visual arts, architecture, and music, and its strength as a hardworking, eminently livable community continued. Today Buffalo is experiencing a social and economic renaissance as a new generation discovers opportunities in life sciences, technology, logistics, and professional services, and the reuse of its industrial and commercial buildings for residential living. Buffalo: A Waterfront City Transformed describes how a grand old city is reinventing itself as a new center of innovation and creativity and an important destination for historical and architectural tourism.