Of politics, baseball and murder at the fair - part four

Buffalo, where even the pawnbrokers have shut up shop. That for many years was the impression of what was happening - a kind of mini-Detroit spiralling into an economic black hole. 

A powerhouse at the turn of the 20th Century, the city claims to have been the birthplace of the grain elevator. Wheat flowed through the port and onto the world. Its proximity to Niagara and early, cheap electricity made Buffalo the ‘City of Light’. Steel production and manufacturing brought great wealth.

In 1896, Ellicot Square was the world’s largest office building.

That same year the Guaranty Building opened. It was one of the first steel skeleton skyscrapers in the United States. 

The building’s security guard - a splendid Buffalo ambassador - hands me a descriptive pamphlet and proudly points out some of the lobby features.

Who worked in these buildings? Perhaps better to ask who owned them. 

Buffalo has some truly impressive mansions, although many - at least downtown - are now occupied by prosperous law firms, an American art form.

The beaux-arts Buffalo Savings Bank welcomed mansion-owners (and others) in 1901, same year as the Pan-American Exposition. The roof tiles are gilded with gold leaf. 

The Rand Building debuted in 1929. Its ‘stepped back’ style may have influenced the Empire State Building' s design. 

Buffalo’s stunning, 1932 deco city hall faces onto a monument honouring the assassinated President McKinley. Although opened in the Great Depression, this building says ‘we’re tops’. If they’d only known.

Getting inside means a (polite) security check as thorough as an airport’s, but well worth it. Just look at this mural depicting city hall’s construction.

Unlike Toronto, too cheap to keep our city hall’s observation level open, visitors are encouraged to go to the top - and there’s Canada on the far side of the water. 

I eavesdrop on other tourists.

‘Is that Canada?“

‘Really?’

‘No!’

‘Never been to Canada’ (in tone of some disinterest).

But back to important matters. Buffalo wasn’t just stylish and monumental buildings.

The Pierce-Arrow, one of the most elegant and expensive cars, was made in Buffalo for decades. That is, until it folded in 1938.

A wander out to the city’s north end and I stare at the factory’s sad, mostly empty remains. But for a solitary passerby, I seem to be the only one around.

Across the street, a bar sign displays the company’s hood ornament, a stylized archer. The bar's deserted.

However, Buffalo's Pierce-Arrow Museum, a short walk from downtown, is just one sign of many that the city’s on a modest rebound. 

Frank Lloyd Wright created a number of Buffalo area structures. But his 1927 concept for a filling station was only seen when completed two years ago. 

In many ways impractical (gravity fed gas pumps were made from glass), its modern realization is, nonetheless, a delight. 

So, to revert for a minute, everything went wrong for Buffalo from the 1950s on: transportation patterns changed; traditional industries shut; jobs moved south away from the snow; the middle class fled and population declined; city revenues dropped; there were race riots and crime soared. Buffalo became one of the poorest cities in the country.

Down the street from my resurrected, upscale hotel, signs from what was Buffalo’s premier department store tell the story. 

Adam, Meldrum & Anderson’s, destination of choice for generations of Canadians looking for American goodies, was forced to call it a day.

Downtown became scary. Canadians and Americans went shopping and eating and clubbing elsewhere. 

But - and this is a story for another time - Buffalo’s staged a remarkable comeback. It still has enormous economic and social problems, however, in much of the city there is some hope - even realization - of a modest revival. And, for the visitor, this city can be a treasure. Thanks, Buffalo.

My blog ends at Ted’s Hot Dogs. I had wanted to get to the restaurant that delivered pizza and wings to President Bill Clinton’s Air Force One, but that must be on another visit.

Ted’s opened in 1927 and is known for charcoal-grilled hot dogs. Buffalo claims to be the home of this treat and they’re something of a cultural institution.

I order my first - and probably last - foot-long hotdog and a chocolate milkshake - yum!

I scan The Buffalo News (headline: 'Things have to change'). The first of the two political conventions is over.

In my country, as elsewhere, there is an undoubted, at times reluctant, fascination in the road to the White House. And be it Canada or the far side of the world, there is certainly no escape from the consequences of U.S. politics - past and present. As I have been reminded here in Buffalo.

Okay, let's get this hotdog down and head for the train.

Of politics, baseball and murder at the fair - part three

Buffalo’s 1901 Pan-American Exposition was large.

Stadium (seating 12,000), exhibits, restaurants, canals and midway covered more than 80 square kilometres (about two hundred acres) with another 50 square kilometres of recreational parkland (Toronto’s Exhibition Place is 78 square kilometres). At the end, nearly every building - they’d been constructed to be temporary - was torn down.

However, well over a century later, and after economics brutally toppled Buffalo from its perch as one of America’s important cities, there’s still local pride in what was staged - and that despite a president being killed.

Lunching downtown, I find myself looking at new mural roughly resembling the imagery on my old exposition paperweight. 

At first glance, out where the event took place, little obvious evidence remains.

Signs rust in well-tended neighbourhoods, which sprang up shortly after the fair ended. But, for the exposition searcher, all is not lost.

What was the New York State Building had been intended to remain and is now Buffalo’s museum.

You can stand on the steps …

… and look where gondolas offered rides on the lake and, in the evening, an ‘electric fountain’ delighted fair-goers with, a press report stated, ‘a dazzling spectacle’.

On the lake’s far side, the superb Albright-Knox Gallery was planned to be the exposition’s Fine Arts Pavilion, but didn’t open until 1905. 

As you can see, both buildings are in the classical style. But the overall design theme was Spanish Renaissance to recognize Central and South American countries exhibiting at the fair.

Here's the Ethnology Building with the shrunken heads that's over my hotel bed.

The ornamentation was overblown, but were the tastes of a different era.

Also of the era was Canada’s pavilion (and its contents), just off Delaware Avenue, next to the Standard Paint Company and dairy display. As a northern nation, Canada was allowed to avoid the ghastly Iberian facades, flourishes and ‘decorative’ motifs. 

Inside, ‘An oil painting that attracts considerable attention is by Paul Wickson, noted Canadian painter, called 'The Story of the Great North West.' It illustrates the retreat of the Red Man with his pony, his gun, and his teepee, before the sturdy Scotch settler with his agricultural implements and his plow horses’.

To my mind and, indeed, for many of the patrons, night was when the exposition was at its best. Using power from nearby Niagara and making the most of electricity’s relative novelty, the fair was lit with some two hundred thousand bulbs. Even by today’s standards, it must have been wonderful.

In the left background, you can see the 123 metres (405 feet) Electric Tower. For comparison, Toronto City Hall is only 74 metres (242 feet). In the dark, the tower could be seen from twenty miles away.

And so I hike some more to see one last current link with the exposition.

In downtown Buffalo is the Electric Tower. Not the Electric Tower, but one opened a decade after the exposition and patterned after its predecessor. As did the city, the new tower eventually went into decline. However, I'm happy to report that it’s been renovated and is illuminated at night. I can see it from my hotel window, but not a great picture at a distance.

What, other than the lights, would I like to have seen?

On the midway, I would have definitely booked A Trip to the Moon. Above you can see the departure over Niagara Falls with the exposition in the distance. ‘After landing on the mountains of the Moon, the tourist disembarks and pays a visit to the marvelous (sic) underground City of the Moon, inhabited by a race of wonderful pigmies and then on to the gorgeous palace of the Man in the Moon where is presented a magnificent ballet by the maidens of his court’. 

During the ‘trip’, tourists were offered samples of green cheese. Admission was 50 cents, double the price of other Midway rides. 

As have many expositions, the 1901 effort lost money, but Buffalo revelled in international attention, at least until Mr. McKinley met his unfortunate end. 

No more walking. Since I can’t go to the moon, time for the Toronto Blue Jays farm team, the Buffalo Bisons, or as we with the secret handshake and team password call it, ‘the herd’ .

$12! Only twelve dollars for behind the plate! Okay, so $12 US equals approximately $15.75 CAD. When I went to the Jays in June, I paid $81. And certainly wasn't behind the plate.

I enjoyably brood while opening my bag of fresh roasted peanuts. The Bisons' purchase was made in thirty seconds. Jays' food lineups are guaranteed to get you back to your seat in time to avoid the cleanup crew at work in the stands. 

But, enough. Baseball’s not only the game of impoverished retirees, it’s the game of presidents, which nicely matches the reason for my Buffalo visit.

Some cherished American pastimes cannot be halted - endless presidential campaigns and baseball. Here’s President Woodrow Wilson throwing out the first pitch of the 1916 season.

Most presidents of the 20th and 21st centuries have thrown out the first pitch. Some have proved better than others. In 1988, Ronald Reagan, the Chicago Cubs former radio announcer, threw two after the first went somewhat astray.

 

I settle comfortably into my chair as do others. It’s a wonderful game and very relaxing with a beer and peanuts on a sultry afternoon. Very relaxing with the occasional crack of a bat and hum of the crowd …

… very, very relaxing. I do like Buffalo.