When Buffalo was incorporated as a city, the East Side represented a vast forested area and farmland that would one day be booming with industry. By 1832, the beginnings of the major arterials of Genesee, Sycamore, Broadway, William, Clinton, and Seneca were there. These streets were laid out in 1826 and represented the seeds of the East Side's explosive growth. The development of railroads and the Buffalo Belt Line, constructed in 1883, created a semicircle pattern that outlined the East Side. Industries began sprouting up, eager to use their proximity to the belt line to transport wares all over the country. Immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Ireland, along with African Americans from northern and southern states, began establishing their lives around these industries. Access to land, water, roads, and rail lines and eager immigrants and natives looking for work led to the development of Buffalo's East Side industry, an immensely diverse industrial base and workforce.

Over the past 200 years, Western New York has been witness to the socioeconomic rise and decline of a mighty steel industry. Like other rust belt cities, Buffalo, New York, was once an incredible financial and manufacturing superpower on the Great Lakes. The steel industry of Western New York was a leader of the Gilded Age and the embodiment of the postwar American dream. It employed almost a third of the regional population--many of whom still live in the area. As time progressed, failure to develop and compete with foreign contenders ultimately led to the collapse of its steel industry. Former steel workers have fought to keep this regional history alive and have contributed to this book. The Steel Plant Museum of Western New York, along with members of the community, have graciously assisted in the selection of images used to describe this once-great and influential industry.

Buffalo's rich architectural and planning heritage has attracted the attention of several prominent historians, whose work here is accompanied by over 250 illustrations and photographs. For its size, the city of Buffalo, New York, possesses a remarkable number and variety of architectural masterpieces from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Adler and Sullivan's Prudential building, H. H. Richardson's massive Buffalo State Hospital, Richard Upjohn's Sr. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, five prairie houses by Frank Lloyd Wright, and building by Daniel Burnham, Albert Kahn, and the firms of McKim, Mead, and White, and Lockwood, Green and Company, among others. These structures by prominent "outsiders" served to spur the efforts of local architects, builders, and craftsmen, and all of them built within the context of the city-wide park and parkway system designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. In addition, the city and its environs exhibit representative works by more recent architects, among them Eero and Eliel Saarinen, Walther Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Paul Rudloph, Minoru Yamasaki, and the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill. Buffalo's rich architectural and planning heritage has attracted the attention of several prominent historians, capable of the challenge of evaluating its significance. Reyner Banham is one of the world's leading authorities on the theory and practice of architecture, and he has written extensively on design in the industrial age (and Buffalo's innovative manufacturing plants and grain elevators are important exemplars of such design). Charles Beveridge, whose essay covers the park and parkway system, is editor of the Olmsted papers at The American University. And Henry Russell Hitchcock is the dean of American architectural historians, and the organizer of a 1940 exhibition on Buffalo's built environment. Their essays are followed by seven sections that delineate the city's neighborhoods, each provided with a map, neighborhood history, and a full complement of photographs with descriptive building captions. An eighth section, "Lost Buffalo," describes demolished buildings, chief among them Wright's great Larkin administration building, while the remaining sections venture out of town, exploring Erie and Niagara Counties, other parts of Western New York, and southern Ontario.

In 1901 Buffalo was the national symbol of the country’s optimism, pride, and braggadocio. Toward the close of the century, it epitomizes the sense of economic and demographic crisis prevalent in American industrial cities. High Hopes analyzes and interprets the historical forces—external and internal— that have shaped New York’s second largest city. It examines the historical shifts that have served as a catalyst in Buffalo’s growth, charting the city’s evolution from a small frontier community through its development as a major commercial center and its emergence and eventual decline as a significant industrial metropolis. Mark Goldman looks at the detailed patterns of local daily life from the settlement of the village in the early nineteenth century to the tragedy of Love Canal. In the process, he covers a wide range of topics, including work, ethnicity, family and community life, class structure, and values and beliefs. By bringing to bear on the events and developments that have shaped Buffalo a broad range of subjects and ideas, Goldman helps readers to understand the vast array of complex forces at work in the historical development of all American cities.

This interdisciplinary volume provides a critical and multi-disciplinary review of current manufacturing processes, practices, and policies, and broadens our understanding of production and innovation in the world economy. Chapters highlight how firms

When Buffalo was incorporated as a city, the East Side represented a vast forested area and farmland that would one day be booming with industry. By 1832, the beginnings of the major arterials of Genesee, Sycamore, Broadway, William, Clinton, and Seneca were there. These streets were laid out in 1826 and represented the seeds of the East Side's explosive growth. The development of railroads and the Buffalo Belt Line, constructed in 1883, created a semicircle pattern that outlined the East Side. Industries began sprouting up, eager to use their proximity to the belt line to transport wares all over the country. Immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Ireland, along with African Americans from northern and southern states, began establishing their lives around these industries. Access to land, water, roads, and rail lines and eager immigrants and natives looking for work led to the development of Buffalo's East Side industry, an immensely diverse industrial base and workforce.

Buffalo at the Crossroads is a diverse set of cutting-edge essays. Twelve authors highlight the outsized importance of Buffalo, New York, within the story of American urbanism. Across the collection, they consider the history of Buffalo's built environment in light of contemporary developments and in relationship to the evolving interplay between nature, industry, and architecture. The essays examine Buffalo's architectural heritage in rich context: the Second Industrial Revolution; the City Beautiful movement; world's fairs; grain, railroad, and shipping industries; urban renewal and so-called white flight; and the larger networks of labor and production that set the city's economic fate. The contributors pay attention to currents that connect contemporary architectural work in Buffalo to the legacies established by its esteemed architectural founders: Richardson, Olmsted, Adler, Sullivan, Bethune, Wright, Saarinen, and others. Buffalo at the Crossroads is a compelling introduction to Buffalo's architecture and developed landscape that will frame discussion about the city for years to come. Contributors: Marta Cieslak, University of Arkansas - Little Rock; Francis R. Kowsky; Erkin Özay, University at Buffalo; Jack Quinan, University at Buffalo; A. Joan Saab, University of Rochester; Annie Schentag, KTA Preservation Specialists; Hadas Steiner, University at Buffalo; Julia Tulke, University of Rochester; Stewart Weaver, University of Rochester; Mary N. Woods, Cornell University; Claire Zimmerman, University of Michigan