History
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==Understand==
==Understand==
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sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
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blurb
blurb
blurb
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sed
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Ut
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The
neighborhoods
north
of
the river are older—in fact
,
the '''Old
First
Ward'''
,
which
extends
from
downtown
east
as
far
as
the
old
'''New
York
Central
Railroad'''
tracks
just past Katherine Street
,
is
the
cradle
of
South
Buffalo,
out
of
which
all
the
outer neighborhoods grew
.
Though
it
remains
Irish
in
constitution, the Old First Ward today bears little resemblance to the teeming working-class slum that it was a century ago: today it's mostly a quiet working-class residential area
in
the
shadow
of
the
grain
elevators. However, its innermost blocks, known as the '''Cobblestone District''', have been given a new lease on life lately as a hip, industrial-chic cluster of bars, restaurants, and even
a
gambling
casino
.
East
of
the
Old
First
Ward
,
sandwiched
between
the New York Central and '''Buffalo Creek Railroad''' tracks (hence its name), is '''The Valley''',
a
largely
Polish
neighborhood
that's
almost
as
old
.
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Outward from these areas lie '''Larkinville''' and '''Seneca-Babcock''', a pair of neighborhoods on South Buffalo's northern boundary that some consider to be part of the [[Buffalo/East Side|East Side]]. They're included here because of their history as industrial centers, their adjacency to Seneca Street (an important South Buffalo thoroughfare), and, in the case of Seneca-Babcock, its majority-Irish ethnic demographics. Seneca-Babcock is a somewhat nondescript neighborhood of working-class homes whose interest to visitors is largely due to the '''Niagara Frontier Food Terminal''' at its northern edge; for its part, Larkinville has emerged as a sort of satellite business district, with corporate offices, small businesses, bars, and restaurants occupying the former warehouses of the '''Larkin Soap Company''', and its central focal point, '''Larkin Square''', hosting frequent events.
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South of the Buffalo River, things get a little more spread-out. Lying just at the foot of the main bridge across the river, the first neighborhood you'll come to is '''The Triangle''', a charming middle-class area of turn-of-the-century flats whose main thoroughfare is '''South Park Avenue'''. blurb blurb blurb
===History===
===History===
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Meanwhile, north of the First Ward was the '''Hydraulic Canal''', which flowed westward from the Buffalo River over a large cascade to the Main and Hamburg Canal, in an area that came to be called '''The Hydraulics'''. Reuben Heacock, a wealthy merchant who was one of Buffalo's founding fathers, built the canal in 1828 to furnish water power for the '''Hydraulic Business Association''', a league of manufacturing concerns he founded. Though the canal eventually proved too small to bring to full fruition Heacock's vision of The Hydraulics as one of the foremost industrial centers in the United States, it was still a buzzing milling district—and together with the harbor, it cemented South Buffalo's enduring status as the city's industrial epicenter.
Meanwhile, north of the First Ward was the '''Hydraulic Canal''', which flowed westward from the Buffalo River over a large cascade to the Main and Hamburg Canal, in an area that came to be called '''The Hydraulics'''. Reuben Heacock, a wealthy merchant who was one of Buffalo's founding fathers, built the canal in 1828 to furnish water power for the '''Hydraulic Business Association''', a league of manufacturing concerns he founded. Though the canal eventually proved too small to bring to full fruition Heacock's vision of The Hydraulics as one of the foremost industrial centers in the United States, it was still a buzzing milling district—and together with the harbor, it cemented South Buffalo's enduring status as the city's industrial epicenter.
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Even before the federal government dissolved the Buffalo Creek Reservation, the overcrowding of the Irish neighborhoods forced some residents to seek out new spaces to live near the harbor—in fact, living conditions in the shantytowns along the lake shore near present-day '''Times Beach''' and on Ganson Street between the grain elevators were somewhat better than in the First Ward proper. However, when the Compromise Treaty of 1842 sent the Seneca south to the '''Cattaraugus Reservation''', huge new tracts of land opened to development. One of the first new neighborhoods was '''The Valley''',
located
just east of the First Ward
and
so
named
because
it
was enclosed on two sides by
railroad tracks. South Buffalo's lot began to improve soon after, with Bishop John Timon working tirelessly to establish Catholic schools, hospitals and charities for the Irish, who were often victims of the anti-Catholic discrimination that ran rampant in city-owned institutions. The leaders of the Irish community also proved to be expert political organizers, playing on popular suspicions of tacit anti-Catholicism in the Republican Party to turn the First Ward loyally Democratic, with droves of voters turning out each Election Day. Soon, Irishmen began to enter political office, appointing their neighbors to lucrative patronage jobs and creating a middle class among their community—they came to be known as "lace-curtain Irish", as opposed to the "shantytown Irish" of the grain mills. (It should be emphasized that political activity in the First Ward was not limited to the ballot box: the most successful of the five Fenian Raids, where battle-hardened Irish-American Civil War veterans sought to invade the British colony of Canada and hold it for ransom until Ireland was granted its independence, was launched from Buffalo in 1866; Buffalo's Fenians successfully ambushed a Canadian militia company at the '''Battle of Ridgeway''' and briefly took '''Fort Erie''' before British reinforcements drove them back across the border.)
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Even before the federal government dissolved the Buffalo Creek Reservation, the overcrowding of the Irish neighborhoods forced some residents to seek out new spaces to live near the harbor—in fact, living conditions in the shantytowns along the lake shore near present-day '''Times Beach''' and on Ganson Street between the grain elevators were somewhat better than in the First Ward proper. However, when the Compromise Treaty of 1842 sent the Seneca south to the '''Cattaraugus Reservation''', huge new tracts of land opened to development. One of the first new neighborhoods was '''The Valley''', just east of the First Ward
on
the
other
side
of
the
railroad tracks. South Buffalo's lot began to improve soon after, with Bishop John Timon working tirelessly to establish Catholic schools, hospitals and charities for the Irish, who were often victims of the anti-Catholic discrimination that ran rampant in city-owned institutions. The leaders of the Irish community also proved to be expert political organizers, playing on popular suspicions of tacit anti-Catholicism in the Republican Party to turn the First Ward loyally Democratic, with droves of voters turning out each Election Day. Soon, Irishmen began to enter political office, appointing their neighbors to lucrative patronage jobs and creating a middle class among their community—they came to be known as "lace-curtain Irish", as opposed to the "shantytown Irish" of the grain mills. (It should be emphasized that political activity in the First Ward was not limited to the ballot box: the most successful of the five Fenian Raids, where battle-hardened Irish-American Civil War veterans sought to invade the British colony of Canada and hold it for ransom until Ireland was granted its independence, was launched from Buffalo in 1866; Buffalo's Fenians successfully ambushed a Canadian militia company at the '''Battle of Ridgeway''' and briefly took '''Fort Erie''' before British reinforcements drove them back across the border.)
The new Irish political class soon turned their efforts to finding a better place to live than the crowded, crime-ridden First Ward, and starting about 1875, the Germans who farmed the lands of the former Seneca reservation south of the river gradually gave way to ''nouveau riche'' Irish city dwellers. Real-estate speculators such as William Fitzpatrick (the so-called "Builder of South Buffalo") were happy to oblige them, laying out side streets off Seneca Street, Abbott Road, and other former farm lanes and filling them with houses as fast as he could build them. Frederick Law Olmsted got into the act, too—he was called back to Buffalo to design a southern extension of the park system that had grown so popular in the city's northern precincts, and when South Buffalo's parks and parkways were finally completed in 1894, they helped stimulate even more growth in the new neighborhoods.
The new Irish political class soon turned their efforts to finding a better place to live than the crowded, crime-ridden First Ward, and starting about 1875, the Germans who farmed the lands of the former Seneca reservation south of the river gradually gave way to ''nouveau riche'' Irish city dwellers. Real-estate speculators such as William Fitzpatrick (the so-called "Builder of South Buffalo") were happy to oblige them, laying out side streets off Seneca Street, Abbott Road, and other former farm lanes and filling them with houses as fast as he could build them. Frederick Law Olmsted got into the act, too—he was called back to Buffalo to design a southern extension of the park system that had grown so popular in the city's northern precincts, and when South Buffalo's parks and parkways were finally completed in 1894, they helped stimulate even more growth in the new neighborhoods.