The *great* blogs being written by several people in Buffalo, particularly Craig Howard, inspired our trip. We spent the last couple of months going thru old blog postings looking for historical locations and other significant places. We visited a large number of them, including the incredible Dodge Street orphanage and this great old house below:
We mapped every place of interest ahead of time using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2007, then followed the map using GPS. We didn't miss a single spot.
We also stopped for food at some our our old favorites, including Asa Ransom House and the Roycroft Inn. And of course Andersons for a roast beef on weck. As well as Parkside Candies for some ice cream (now Perrys ice cream, but just as good). There are many more places to eat like these that we wished we could have visited...
One particular focus was on my Mother's childhood neighborhood in the Fruit Belt, including her high school nearby. Needless to say, the neighborhood has changed a lot from ~60 years ago - but it's not as bad as we initially thought it would be. My Mom tried to talk her way into the school for a quick look around (she is after all a former teacher in the Buffalo school system), but unfortunately they were testing students and we couldn't get in.
Another unfortunate fact: Central Terminal was unavailable for a look-around. I had talked to the group before our trip (they have done a great job saving it!) and they told me the bad news. I will come back sometime to our it. I would have sworn I'd been in it as a child (possibly for our train trip to the worlds fair in 1964?).
Our tour began with a landing at the Buffalo Airport... which was completely unrecognizable (and that's a very good thing!). I think the long passage below was originally the eastern termimal of the airport, which as I remember used to have an outdoor viewing platform where the jet exhaust of the planes would blast you! No more...
All of us moved away from Buffalo for career purposes around ~20 years ago, and I haven't been back for more than a day since then. So we really wanted to see what everything looked like and how the city is doing. We found a lot of good news, some bad, and some things that are as hopeless as ever (http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/73337.html).
And we have over 760 photos, which together with original photos we took 20-60 years ago will form the basis of this site. It will take some time to process all of this, and we have severe information overload from our trip, but now the real work on this site can (at last) begin. Hopefully our fellow ex-Buffalonians will also see some places they might remember...!
More (lots more!) once we get our thoughts and photos organized....
-Jeff Fisher
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