Best of WNY: Great Neighborhoods
Clarence Hollow
By Bruce Eaton
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Nestled in the southeast corner of Clarence, Clarence Hollow is one of the first—if not the very first—neighborhoods in Western New York. Centered around the home and tavern built by Asa Ransom in 1799, Clarence Hollow served as both a stop for those travelling along the Buffalo Road (now Main Street) and as a commerce center for area settlers and farmers. Those who view Clarence as the current poster town for suburban sprawl might keep this in mind: Buffalo is actually a suburb of Clarence, the first incorporated town in the Holland Land Purchase.
Unlike suburban developments with faux-names meant to imply membership in some imaginary gentry, Clarence Hollow is just as advertised: a mile-long hollow in the Onondaga Escarpment. With names like Academy, Sawmill, and Bank, the tree-lined streets in the Hollow reflect the neighborhood’s roots and are lined with diverse (and affordable) housing, from nineteenth century Victorians to post-War capes and colonials. Neighborhood children attend nearby Ledgeview Elementary, reinforcing the strong sense of community.
Clarence Hollow is an ideal destination for a weekend drive. Victoria Park near the western end of the town (Main and Shisler) is the site of a traditional farmer’s market on Saturday mornings through October 25th. On Sundays, Antique World (at the eastern end bordering on Newstead) hosts the premiere flea market in the region.
A variety of antiques dealers and co-ops, as well as specialty shops, can be found along Main Street, making it easy to browse the hours away. At the end of the day, you’ll most certainly have found a perfect addition to your home’s decor.
Wherever you begin, you’ll want to have the Discover Historic Clarence Hollow guide, available at www.clarencehollow.org, which includes a walking tour of some of the area’s historic buildings. Standing in front of Antique Lighting at the intersection of Main and Ransom, it is not difficult to imagine its beginnings as Humbert’s Mercantile and Drug Store over a century ago. Nearby is the Asa Ransom House, the centerpiece of the Hollow and long recognized as one the region’s premiere dining establishments, as well as a charming nine-room inn. At the back of the property stands the grist mill Asa Ransom built in 1803. Just up the street, the Clarence Historical Museum provides the chance to learn more about area history.
Clarence Hollow was the center of the Methodist movement in Western New York in the early 1800s, spearheaded by the Reverend Glezen Fillmore, cousin of President Millard Fillmore (who often referred to Glezen as being the smart one in the family). Now located at the corner of Greiner and Stricker Roads, Clarence United Methodist Church hosts its annual Apple Festival on Saturday, October 18, a much-anticipated community event that celebrates the harvest of the season (call 759-8921 for info). Several of the nineteenth century churches in the Hollow are now home to retail establishments, including Henry and Co., a fine furniture store featuring French imports from the early 1900’s.
While Clarence Hollow lacks an institution of higher learning per se, it is home to The Clarence Bowling Academy, a nationally-recognized eight-lane facility operated by the Gsell family. While the debate over who has Buffalo’s best fish fry will never be settled, there are none fresher than the Academy’s as mother Jan hand-cuts the french fries and breads each haddock filet to order.
If you prefer to walk or bicycle, you can traverse over fifteen miles of paved trails through nearby farms, fields, wetlands and forests. The West Shore Trail begins at Main and Salt Roads in the Hollow and stretches into the heart of Akron. A second section runs from Clarence Town Park to Wehrle Drive.
Whether you’re looking for a destination to explore on a weekend or a great place to live, you’ll find that Clarence Hollow has a real sense of neighborhood, strengthened by 200-year roots, that can’t be duplicated on a drawing board.
After years of urban living, frequent Spree contributor Bruce Eaton has lived in Clarence Hollow for nearly a decade.
Walking Through Lockport
By Elizabeth Licata
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Although it is very much a family-friendly town, many aspects of Lockport keep it from being more like a big suburb than a small city. There is the Erie Canal, which runs all the way through town. There is the Big Bridge at the intersection of Transit and Main Streets, the widest bridge in the United States, which we were always told and didn’t quite believe. Since then, though, I have seen that fact confirmed in several reference books on the Canal. Then there are the canal locks that gave the city its name, two sets of them. If you’re willing to hang out near one of the overlooks for about an hour on a summer’s day, you can watch the entire impressive (and laborious) process of a boat being lifted or lowered over the 50-foot-high drop. Along Market Street, which borders the Canal, you can see Lockport’s oldest stone houses, as well as some new additions such as Market Street Gallery and the Lockport Canal Cruises.
We moved from Walnut Street to Pine Street near Lincoln on the southern end of town when I entered high school. This is decidedly a classier area, with many large residences. The Kenan Center, a former industialist’s mansion, is near here, as is Lockport High School, the oldest high school in Western New York (Lockport is slightly older than Buffalo), though the original building is gone.
I never knew this when I lived there, but the fire hydrant, the game of volleyball, and the honeycombed car radiator were all invented in Lockport.
I did know that Joyce Carol Oates was from Lockport—her books were a prominent part of our library. And I knew that I could walk from my high school, De Sales, about five miles to the northeast, to my Pine Street house in an hour. Often with friends, I would enjoy looking at all the different houses that made up all the different neighborhoods of this friendly, small-town, suburban city.
Elizabeth Licata is editor of Buffalo Spree.
The Olmsted Crescent: A Walking Tour of Buffalo’s First Suburb
By Anna Geronimo Hausmann
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In fact, if you’re coming to pretty much any cultural attraction, from pretty much anywhere in the city or a suburb, you have to drive through or past Buffalo’s first suburb, the Parkside neighborhood. Designed and laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted as a residential border between his newly-designed park system and the City proper, the plan consisted of gently curving streets with wide front lawns and large trees forming a calming canopy.
The neighborhood was laid out as four streets—Crescent, Greenfield, Woodward (originally Davis), and Summit—which echo one another’s graceful undulations and slight slope from Main Street towards Parkside. The neighborhood has remained strikingly residential through its more than one hundred year history, with many of the large, Victorian and Prairie-style homes remaining single family, with doubles and triples sprinkled in. There has been relatively little multiple residential development and virtually no attempts to commercialize the neighborhood, which lends to its “suburb in the city” feeling.
The Parkside Community Association was formed in 1963 to help counteract some negative changes that were occurring in the neighborhood. The PCA has focused on helping homeowners maintain their properties, enhancing the historic nature of the area, and strengthening the community’s connection to its cultural neighbors, especially Delaware Park. In 1987, the entire neighborhood of Parkside became an Architectural Landscape District on the National Register of Historic Places and today the close-knit neighborhood is a model of stability, safety, and community pride. In recent years, housing has continued to maintain its value and has risen dramatically, with many houses selling before they are even listed.
Walking the neighborhood is the best way to get a feel for its quiet beauty and to appreciate the fine prospects afforded by the streets’ meanderings. Entering on Crescent Street at Parkside, just before the railroad overpass, you get a good, long walk of three peaceful, tree-lined blocks before arriving at Amherst Street. The houses are set back from the street and in a variety of styles, including late Victorian, Queen Anne, Romanesque, Tudor Revival, Shingle, Bungalow, and Prairie Style. Most are three stories, originally with servants’ quarters on the third floors or in the carriage houses behind the main residences.
Taking a short detour down Amherst past Greenfield and over the train tracks takes you to the corner of Fairfield and the historic Fairfield branch of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. Built in 1897 as the Parkside Unitarian Church, the library now bustles as the center of the Parkside community with busy children’s programs and after school book and chess clubs. You are making a large crescent around the neighborhood, which is why the area is called the Olmsted Crescent. Turning off Crescent down Russell will lead you directly to the front entrance of the Buffalo Zoo. Continuing on Crescent to Jewett Parkway, you pass the Girls Scouts Council building and an 1870 barn from the original Willowlawn estate.
Turning right down Jewett one block to Summit you will see on your left the beautiful Church of the Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. Built in 1887, the church is in the Richardsonian Romanesque style with Tiffany stained glass windows.
Diagonally across Jewett Parkway, you will see the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Darwin Martin House. The site is really a complex that originally included two houses, a gardener’s cottage, pergola, conservatory, greenhouse, stable, and garage. The complex’s Prairie-style architecture and Tree of Life art glass windows are international treasures. When renovation is completed, the Darwin Martin House corporation expects to host many thousands of visitors each year.
Continuing down Jewett Parkway and turning right onto Woodward, you will be able to view the gardener’s cottage of the Darwin Martin site. Like the other streets on the crescent, Woodward features wide front lawns, houses with large, open porches, and mature trees meeting over the street.
At the corner of Woodward and Amherst Street is St. Mark’s Catholic Church. Built in 1908, the large, Gothic-style church and its elementary school are community mainstays.
The Olmsted Crescent neighborhood of Parkside truly is a suburb in the city. Though it feels a world apart, due to such strategic elements as the curves of the streets, the fact that traffic flows neither toward nor away from the city proper, and the mature trees and wide front lawns, the neighborhood is really right in the thick of some of the city’s most popular cultural attractions and shopping districts. Parkside offers its residents the best of both worlds.
Anna Geronimo Hausmann is associate editor of Buffalo Spree.
The Neighborly Way: Buffalo’s West Village Historic District
By Melissa Sandor
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-Remarks by Vice President Al Gore at Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C. September 2, 1998)
Plant neighborhood and Christian-like accord.
-Shakespeare (The Life of King Henry V)
On a recent visit to Western New York, I reminisced about the summers I spent growing up in Kenmore. It was a generation before “play dates” and driving schedules, when neighbors spent temperate evenings visiting on their porches and in their backyards, and kids rode their bikes exploring their neighborhoods or swinging on the swings at the local playground. Times have changed, as we are often, uncomfortably, aware. But there are some neighborhoods where community members band together to create a community that is not only livable, but one that offers a rich texture of cooperation and fellowship for each of its residents. Buffalo’s West Village Historic District community is one.
The West Village Historic District is a twenty-two-acre enclave of streets located northeast of Niagara Street and south of West Tupper. It borders South Elmwood Avenue and includes Johnson Park, West Chippewa, Cary, Tracy, Carolina, and Georgia streets as well as Rabin Terrace and Prospect Avenue. Located within walking distance of downtown Buffalo and the Lake Erie waterfront, the West Village retains many of the original architectural details that characterize its history and add to its old world charm, including tree-lined streets, slate sidewalks and stone carriage steps.
Johnson Park is the center of the West Village, and offers ample, manicured green space for residents and business owners from the surrounding neighborhood to gather. Named for former Buffalo Mayor Ebenezer Johnson, this subdivision was built by Johnson in 1832, and by 1845 it had evolved into a trend-setting and fashionable residential area. A series of disastrous fires in the City of Buffalo at this time forced City officials to pass an 1850 law requiring all residential buildings in certain areas of density to be constructed of brick. As a result, 83% of the buildings on Johnson Park have maintained their original brick structure.
After Mayor Johnson passed away, the site of his “Cottage,” a twenty-four room Palladian Villa on the Park, became the site for the Female Academy of Buffalo, the first institute of higher learning for women in the country. In addition, Frederick Law Olmsted’s 1876 map of parkland in the city of Buffalo indicates that he redesigned the Johnson Park Green, and this design was eventually incorporated into his overall plan for the City. Today, Johnson Park is the oldest residential neighborhood in Buffalo, and one of the few communities in the nation to have achieved triple designation as an historic district under the City of Buffalo and New York State’s Landmark and Preservation Ordinance and the federal National Register of Historic Places.
Over the past few decades, the socio-economic challenges that plague urban neighborhoods across the northeast, as well as throughout the country, have affected the West Village Historic District as well. However, concerned and committed residents work to face these challenges including The Johnson Park Association and The Cary Street Association, both of which are leading, member-driven forces in the neighborhood’s sustainability Established in the mid-seventies, The Johnson Park Association is led by Association President Marilyn Rodgers, a financial professional who lives on the Park with her partner Anne Gareis. The Association is composed of racially and economically diverse individuals from a variety of professions including attorneys, marketing professionals, gardeners, architectural model makers, students, writers, and many more. In fact, it is the diversity of this membership that Rodgers credits with the Association’s great progress this past year. For example, since August, 2002, members have worked “countless hours,” as Rogers points out, beautifying the Johnson Park Green and making it safe for residents and their friends and families. In particular, members of the Association have been working with Peter BonSey, an internationally renowned garden designer, most noted for his work on The Learning Channel’s highly successful show While You Were Out. A resident of Snyder, BonSey is contributing his time to help Johnson Park create “an Old English park—a large center that is then delineated by wrought iron posts and chains into highly accessible sections of greenery, and one that is in keeping with the architectural integrity of the neighborhood.” BonSey depicted the Association’s approach in revitalizing the park as “family-oriented and not about high tech gadgetry. The community is so open to the public and tries very hard to promote the involvement of residents and neighbors. I appreciate their approach very much and have felt welcomed by them in our work together.”
Rodgers cites the importance of opening up the neighborhood to people who are not residents of the Park, but who truly make a difference in their small community. She cites making friends with local public workers such as policeman and sanitation workers as vital in the Association’s efforts to improve the quality of life in the West Village Historic District. She explains, “We offer them a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, especially during the winter months. And we always make sure to stop and say hello. It’s the kind of community we want to create in Johnson Park—one that cares about the people who live and work here each day.”
In addition, Johnson Park has developed a variety of public programs for neighborhood residents and the public including the “Walk With Me” program, which provides information on the architectural, social, and economic history of Johnson Park, and the “Neighborhood Relief Program” which grants assistance to neighbors who are in need of emergency financial assistance. Each year a number of houses on Johnson Park, as well as throughout the West Village, participate in Buffalo’s Annual Garden Walk.
The Johnson Park Association held a spectacular “Arts in the Park: Back to our Roots Day” on August 31 in conjunction with The New Phoenix Theatre On the Park and Spot Coffee. This day-long event offered a family festival of arts activities and games including an architectural and historical tour of Buffalo’s first park and a performance by the African American Cultural Center Drum and Dance Troupe.
When asked about this resurgence in the community’s interest in the Park, as well as the Association’s success, Rodgers explains, “The Johnson Park Association has used this simple equation: we have utilized Kellig’s “Broken Windows” theory along with Giuliani’s “Sweat the Small Stuff” and added common sense principles, foresight and responsibility to all that is around us as well as for future generations. This combination will create the renaissance of Buffalo.”
A West Village compatriot of Johnson Park is the Cary Street Association. Established in 1984, members of this group have worked steadfastly with public representatives and private individuals to assist in the quality of life issues affecting the West Village Historic District. Association President Laird Robertson emphasizes Cary Street’s work with City of Buffalo and agency officials to develop a common agreement on the design and/or reuse of buildings in the area. In addition, members have initiated discussions with area business owners, including those on West Chippewa Street, about neighborhood noise pollution and waste disposal. Robertson has characterized these discussions as “crucial” in making the West Village a desirable place to live for people from all walks of life including business professionals, blue collar workers, professors, and artists etc. as he explains, “The people who live on Cary Street come from all backgrounds—some have to get up at 6:00 a.m. to start their day, some work from home, others work well into the evening. It was just a matter of letting area business owners know that our community is a place where people come for entertainment, and it is also a place where people live. It has been tremendous for us to cooperate with business owners on the standard of living we want to promote. I think it’s worked out for everyone.”
One particular example of the Association’s work is their cooperation with AIDS Community Services on the successful renovation of their new historic headquarters at 200 South Elmwood Avenue, an 1854 Italianate Victorian next to the Roanoke Hotel, where ACS resides currently. Robertson describes the Association’s focus: “When the Association was first formed, we were dealing with aesthetic and design issues, and the way that people saw their own property. However, as we’ve grown, we’ve begun working on larger issues that affect the sustainability of this community—education, responsible use of energy, environmental design—these are the sorts of things that make our community an ideal place to live. We also work together to help each other out, snow blowing each other’s driveways and the street...We want to stay connected as a community as we work to change Elmwood Avenue back in to an avenue and not just a thoroughfare to reach the suburbs. We believe that this will help revitalize the tremendous infra-structure that exists in downtown Buffalo.”
In addition to the work that Johnson Park and Cary Street are accomplishing in their own vicinities, these associations also collaborate with one another and offer a place for individuals who reside on the additional streets in the West Village to gather and work towards the continued sustainability of this historic community.
Tonawanda native Melissa Sandor is a fiction writer and consultant living in New York.
North Tonawanda's Old First Ward and Environs
By Ron Ehmke
The trilogy of Tonawandas can prove baffling to outsiders. When I first moved to what I thought was plain old “Tonawanda” a few years ago, people kept asking “which one?” and I wasn’t sure at first how to answer. There are sharp geographical and cultural distinctions—many of which I’m still sussing out—between the City, the Town, and the place locals call “NT.” But that last one is easy: it’s in a different county than the other two, separated from them by the Erie Canal, and it simply feels like Somewhere Else.
With Oliver Street’s ancient (and probably apocryphal) reputation for a record number of saloons per linear mile in its lumber-town days, I like to describe NT to Simpsons fans as Shelbyville to the City’s Springfield: the rowdier neighbor on the other side of the bridge.
The older parts of both towns exude a certain turn-of-the-(last)-century small-town Americana; walking through them, I feel like it’s 1906, or else I’m on the set of Meet Me in St. Louis.
That sensation of a land outside time is at its sharpest during the annual Firemen’s Day parade every June, when vintage fire trucks fill broad thoroughfares like NT’s Goundry Street and the retired members of countless volunteer companies toss candy at the waving preteens who could be their grandchildren. The stately houses on Goundry were originally built for the timber barons who once ran the town, and they remain in great shape today. Smack dab in the middle of them, at 240 Goundry, is the former public library commissioned by Andrew Carnegie which now serves as the Carnegie Cultural Center. Inside, neighborhood classes and provocative exhibitions of contemporary visual art and media inhabit a space still infused with the spirit of a bygone era.
Wander a mile or two in either direction—from Oliver eastward to Division Street/Twin Cities Highway, and from Sweeney north to Schenck—and you’ll find block after block of slightly less grand but equally impressive homes, their wide, quaint porches flocked with well-tended gardens. Those along Christiana and Falconer Streets are particularly noteworthy, though Tremont is also worth a look. Nearby Pine Woods Park, bounded on one side by Whiting Road and on the other by Division, is a small but utterly charming spot for a picnic, complete with exactly the kind of nature trails that appeal to me: dense enough to disorient you, but short enough that you can hike from end to end in fifteen minutes. Once you emerge, cross the street and enjoy one of the legendary sweet treats at Muscoreil’s Fine Desserts (395 Division).
There’s no generally accepted name for the neighborhood I’m describing, but locals sometimes refer to it as the Old First Ward (further confusing Buffalonians). On its outskirts, you’ll stumble upon the Herschell Carousel Factory Museum (180 Thompson), one of the area’s best-known artifacts of its fabled past. Another key landmark, the Riviera Theater, is not far away at 67 Webster, in the heart of the two-block strip that passes for “downtown.” One by one, the last bastions of what used to be a classic Main Street, USA have vanished, but it’s still possible to enjoy a great breakfast served with character at Lou’s (73 Webster), then get your hair cut by master conversationalist Charlie the Barber just down the block. Or maybe you’re more in the mood for one of the best Texas hots in Western New York courtesy of Nestor’s (102 Webster), followed by an hour or two of bargain hunting in the flea markets, thrift stores, and antique shops.
From there, you’re practically obliged to visit the waterfront. Pleasure boats explore the Erie Canal well into the fall. The Canalway Trail is a great way to stroll or bike along the water, even if it’s abrupt end deposits you onto busy Sweeney Street just after the great view of the “Jack-Knife” railroad bridge. Built in 1919, the cantilevered structure was meant to revolutionize transportation but the style never quite caught on. It stands today, covered in rust, as one final, vivid reminder of what life in NT looked and felt like, nearly a century ago.
Ron Ehmke is a Louisiana-born writer and performer who now makes his home in (the City of) Tonawanda.
The Many Babysitters Of Jim Griffin
By Lou Petrucci
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Some say “you have to focus on the history. Tell people about John Timon, the first Bishop of Buffalo and the difficulties he had establishing the Diocese of Western New York.”
Settled largely by Irish immigrants in the 1840’s, the Old First Ward was an area to call their own amidst the animosity showered on them by Protestants and the more established German Catholics. The Gaelic speaking Bishop Timon was their champion. The Old First Ward has clung to this Irish ethnic identity, though subsequent waves of newly arrived Americans are now reflected in the neighborhood’s composition. The Old First Ward still comes alive for the month of March with the Shamrock Run, the OFW St. Patrick’s Day Parade, and for St. Patrick’s Day itself.
Others say, “you have to talk about politics. Let people know that the Old First Ward was a political powerhouse that could deliver the votes to change an election. Talk about the famous politicians. Talk about Jimmy Griffin.”
When I worked on Griffin’s campaigns, the same story I heard over and over from women only slightly older than him, and some obviously contemporaries, was “I used to baby-sit him when he was small.” I had heard my own great aunts say the same thing. My greatgrandparent’s house was across the street from the house in which the former mayor grew up, so it is possible, even plausible. Still, even if only portions of these tales are true, the man had a lot of baby sitters.
For others, the OFW is all about the waterfront. For generations, the people of the Old First Ward worked in the iron foundries, the shipyards, or in some area of the grain industry, which had begun and grew in the neighborhood and along the Niagara River. The iron foundries and shipyards are but memories. The St. Lawrence Seaway and changes in ship design and technology have reduced the grain industry to a shadow of its former self. The Scoopers, the men who for generations would climb into the belly of the great lake freighters to shovel out the contents, unloaded their last ship last year and consequently have sold their union hall. The last chapter of Buffalo as a great port city was closed.
For yet others, the OFW is all about the architecture. Roughly bordered by South Park Avenue, the railroad tracks past Katherine Street, Michigan Avenue, Lake Erie, and the Buffalo River, the Old First Ward is home to some of the oldest homes in the city of Buffalo. Some structures were actually floated down the Erie Canal and placed in their present locations. Driving down South Park, few people turn down the side streets to see a neighborhood of neat, well-kept houses that have been in families for generations. The controversy surrounding the demolition of the Harbor Inn brought changes in how the City knocks down buildings, but also the realization that many of our oldest structures are located outside of preservation districts and do not enjoy the protections afforded by local preservation ordinances.
And for others still, the OFW conjures memories of the 155th New York Volunteer Infantry, the overwhelmingly Irish American regiment that fought in the Civil War with deep roots in the Old First Ward. Touch upon the Fenian Raid, they say, and the Battle of Ridgeway. Explain what the sign on the side of the road means when driving to Crystal Beach.
But overwhelmingly, the one thing people from the OFW wanted me to talk about was the closeness of the community, the relationships, and the interrelationships that come from decades of large families, inter-marriage, and close-knit parishes. In many ways, the defining feature of Buffalo’s OFW is that it is really one big family.
A woman I met at a wedding recently came close to describing it when she told me about her family in Appalachia. She described to me the difference between “first first cousins” and “second first cousins.” When one of your father’s siblings marries one of your mother’s siblings their children are your “first first cousins.” When one of your father or mother’s siblings just marries another person, their offspring are your “second first cousins.” Not that the OFW is Appalachia, but members of large Irish-American families have been marrying members of other large Irish-American families in OFW for generations.
The first Mount Mercy dance I attended, I was dressed to the nines in my new Kleinhan’s jacket and tie. A carnation pinned to my lapel, I went to pick up my date. I shook her father’s hand, ignoring the disapproving look, turned a polite cheek to her mother’s kiss, and then her grandmother asked, “So how is your grandfather?”
“Great. How do you know my grandfather?”
“We are cousins.” The look of horror on my date’s face at the future prospect of flipper children changed the dynamic of the evening. I wish I could say it was the only time it happened.
Another date dance. This time, my date’s father asked me about my origins.
“Petrucci? What kind of name is that?’
“Italian. My grandfather was born there.”
“Who’s your mother?”
“She’s Irish. Born in the Ward and raised in South Buffalo.”
“My family is from the Ward before we moved to South Buffalo.” We discussed our family lineage until we came to a common name.
“You’re related to Irene?” My date’s father asked, raising his eyebrow, Cousin Irene was a woman of no means of obvious employment who, to be polite, lived on the largess of her gentleman callers. Cousin Irene was one of my mother and uncle’s favorites, always giving them money for a soft drink. “She is related to me also.”
“Which Irene?” my date asked.
“That Irene,” My date’s father stated knowingly. After that experience, I avoided family history discussions when meeting the parents.
Occasionally, the family relationships are less obvious and require more in-depth investigation. When my daughter, Cara, was diagnosed with bi-lateral Wilm’s tumor, kidney cancer, she had to undergo surgery and chemotherapy. As part of a research project studying Wilm’s tumor that we were participating in, my wife and I had to each prepare a family history to search for the rare recessive gene of which we might both be carriers. My wife’s grandfather came from Scranton, Pennsylvania, of Irish and German extraction but both of our mothers’ families came from the OFW. We went back generation after generation until the 1870’s—where we found our common OFW ancestor.
Just like a big family they so literally resemble, the residents of the OFW stick together and watch out for one another with a strong sense of community. I had the opportunity to attend a block club meeting at the OFW Community center regarding a rash of burglaries that recently occurred. At most block club meetings I attend, the organizers are happy if they have thirty people show up. This meeting had over 300 in attendance.
Part of living in a neighborhood for a long time, and in some cases for generations, is that you know the people that live around you, the good, the bad, how they became that way, and how they are all connected. The Old First Ward remains one of Buffalo’s oldest, most stable neighborhoods, rich in both history and stories. Just don’t ask me if we are related.
Louis Petrucci is Chief Housing Inspector for the City of Buffalo.
The Pleasures of Arlington Park
By Nan L. Haynes
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Too bad everyone can’t live on a park. Not necessarily a meadowed and forested expanse like Delaware Park or the other Olmsted jewels. Just a neighborhood greenspace will do, like Arlington Park in Allentown.
“I can remember the first time I saw this park,” says Jeff Freier. He and his wife had been walking around the neighborhood, turned onto Arlington Place and saw “a whole new world.”
“The openness of it really struck home,” he recalls.
The park, a 300-foot by 100-foot oval, was laid out in 1856 as a private park on the estate of James Wadsworth, accessible from North Street, which was the northern boundary of the City of Buffalo, and from Wadsworth Street, which runs from Symphony Circle to Allen Street. Essentially, this was the suburbs.
The city grew, Allentown became more populated, and through pedestrian use, the park in 1884 was ruled to be in the public domain.
Frederick Law Olmsted, the famed landscape architect who designed Central Park in New York City, lived on Arlington while he designed Buffalo’s major parks and parkway system in the 1870s and 1880s. He landscaped the park after his own romantic notions of a neighborhood common.
It’s a “passive space,” says Hallie Howell, who owns 24 Arlington. “This is what Olmsted wanted,” she says—a serene place where residents could find respite from the busy city streets. There’s room to play catch, but there are too many trees and period lampposts to, say, play touch football.
The park is surrounded by Arlington Place, a unique street of historic homes, each of a different architectural style. “All the houses have character,” says Angelo Gonzales, who lives with his wife and daughter at 11 Arlington.
The Gonzaleses own a two-and-half-story stucco design reminiscent of an English country house. Next door at No. 15 is Allentown’s only Dutch colonial, built in 1898. The Freiers, at No. 12, own a two-story Second Empire cottage built in 1878. No. 18 is a two-story Italianate built in 1867. No. 60, a two-story Gothic Revival built in 1867, looks like a storybook gingerbread cottage. All different, built in different decades. “There’s nothing prefabricated,” says Gonzales.
The neighborhood is tight. Homes are close together, the street is narrow, through traffic is scarce. Gonzales likes the way the houses face each other across the park. “It’s more like a family,” he says. When children play in the park, “there’s always somebody watching out for them.”
The park gives focus to the block club, who plant flowers in spring, rake leaves in autumn, hold a summer picnic, and apply peer pressure to dog owners to clean up after their pets.
It makes for close neighbors. “We’re like a big, extended family,” says Patti Gonzales. “We cheat Blockbuster out of a lot of money,” by lending tapes to each other before the due date.
Freier thinks the street has a “college or university atmosphere, because everybody lives close together. There’s that community atmosphere whether you like it or not—but most people like it or they wouldn’t live here.”
Jayne K. Rand, who owns No. 6, likes the diversity of the residents of this “quaint little enclave.” There are professionals, young workers, retirees, families with children, childless couples, gay couples, singles. The sixteen-unit apartment building at No. 19 is home to several D’Youville College graduate students, among others.
Ruth Stockton has lived at No. 8 for 58 years. She recalls when the houses were painted in somber colors and young residents were scarce. Now there’s a lighter streetscape and more young people. “I think it looks better than it ever did,” she says.
Nan L. Haynes is an Allentown resident and attorney.
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