...And They All Look Just The Same....

Today's blog is centered on the suburbs of the 1950's and 60's.  The post war era that brought home those fighting in World War Two as well as Korea.  As these soldiers were coming home, there came about a need to house these people as well as there soon-to-be families with the onset of the baby boom.  Another idea that arose at the same time was the idea of everybody having their own "piece of the pie", real estate.  It became common place for people to want their own piece of land with their own house and garage for their new car.  There was a large push away from renting in the "over crowded" city to the openness and fresh air of the suburbs.  As the song "Little Boxes" portrays, there was a huge movement to produce an enormous amount of affordable housing for all of these soldiers who were coming home from the wars with pockets full of money earned fighting overseas.  What ended up happening was that a lot of these houses turned out looking the same.  Each neighborhood would have one maybe two different type of house that would be erected on every lot of the suburb so every house would look the same, ticky-tacky.

Traveling along Millersport Highway, you can easily see the ticky-tacky little boxes the song is talking about.  Almost every house on that stretch of road is the same house.  Some have been added on to, like a second floor or a larger garage, but all were built at the same time and look the same.  Cape cod style house with a single car attached garage.  What I feel is kinda of funny is that my house was built in 1936, pre WWII and here is a picture:

Funny thing huh?  The definitive house of the suburbs!!  I didn't really put these two together until well after I bought this house.  Also, this is not on that stretch of Millersport, this is located in Tonawanda yet the house style is the same and it somewhat acts the same for me.  This is my house with my yard in my neighborhood.  And yes, there are a large number of capes on my street as well as in the general area.

I think Hayden's argument is pretty close.  The suburbs gave the impression that they promised certain things and then they delivered, house yard and neighborhood.  Today, however, I think the suburbs do not eliver these three things.  I don't feel that the newer suburbs deliver the neighborhood aspect any more.  Too many of these newer suburbs lose the concept of neighborhood.  The houses are too far apart that people who live next door to each other may find it difficult to actually see each other on a regular basis.  Another influence on this lack of interaction to me is the the idea of lawnservices.  Back in the 50's and 60's in these new suburbs, people took pride in taking care of their own lawns and landscaping.  These days, I can't even count how many landscape businesses are in the phone book.  With these homeowners not going out to take care of their own property, they lose the chance to interact and get to know their own neighbors.  This is why I feel the suburbs are lacking the idea of neighborhood these days.

Crime And Scandal

So, last week, Carl and I went on yet another tour of Buffalo.  This tour was called the "Crime and Scandal" tour, great name however, not so great on results.  It started with great enthusiasm from the two of us, crime and scandal the morning of Halloween, learning about how Buffalo was active in the art of bootlegging during Prohibition.  Unfortunately, I felt it came up a bit short.  Maybe this has something to do with the fact that we have been on a number of other tours over the last couple of months.  There's bound to be some repetition of facts and such between some of the tours.

Anyway, there were a number of cool things about the tour.  For example, the Calumet building used to hold the main office of the Ku Klux Klan chapter here in Buffalo, until a list of their members was "found" and released to the public.  Also interesting that this same list is one of the few ever lists of KKK membership let alone one that is still around to be researched.  And it is, it is kept at either the Erie County Historical Society or the Main Library Branch downtown.

I also thought it was pretty cool to learn that Niagara Square was the site of a triple hanging back in the day.  People, apparently, came from far away to see this type of spectacle.  What I didn't understand was that after the hanging, the bodies were taken all the way to Collins for burial.  That's pretty far away in the times of no formaldehyde!!!

All in all, a fairly educational tour.  It also happened to be the largest tour so far, about 50 people!  Unfortunately, I wish there was a bit more talk about the bootlegging and other crimes and a little less about the upcoming elections and building architecture.

Buffalo's Architecture

For this assignment I chose the area of North Buffalo.  I chose this neighborhood because I feel it has a number of the different styles we talked about both in class as well as within this week's reading.  Just from driving around the area, I noticed that there are both fancy hoses and vernacular style doubles only a few blocks away from each other.  For example, the Parkside area is full of gingerbread trim as well as Victorian style houses, also don't forget the amazing Prairie style of Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House shown here:

And here is a nice Victorian from Crescent Ave. not far from the Martin house:

You can see the gingerbread trim along the top of the porch.

Another major style used in the area is the vernacular doubles.  When most people think of North Buffalo they think of a lot of rental property, doubles or flats they are usually called.  I find it interesting that there are so many of these houses in the area, yet close to so many more expensive styles of houses to build.  For example, you can walk from the corner of Hertel and Colvin south on Colvin and see a great number of these doubles, yet if you walk up one of the side streets like Tillinghast, Crescent or even Nottingham Terrace, you can see so many other styles that are not on the main drag like georgian revival, victorian, prairie, bungalo and so many more.

This house is also on Crescent and it shows characteristics of both Prairie style with the somewhat low angle roof as well as Queen Anne style with the asymmetrical front and tower.

Here is one of the famous North Buffalo Double.  These houses have such a distinctive style with the front porch and door to one side, matching door on to the upper porch as well.  Another defining feature I notices was the painting of the houses.  Often times these houses are painted different colors on the top half and bottom half accenting the fact that they are two family homes.  I used to live in a house of this style on Parkside Ave. for a few years, if I can find a picture of it I will add it later.

I found it very interesting to view these houses and the area in a little bit different of a light than I have in the past.  I never really thought about why houses were put where they were.  For example, the saying  involving the term "the wrong side of the tracks" kind of fits for this area.  In North Buffalo, the houses are much bigger and made of more expensive materials on the city side of the train tracks that dissect the area compared to the houses closer to Hertel which are made of cheaper materials as well as mainly multiple family dwellings as opposed to single family.  This would allow the two families to possibly share the mortgage payments and own the house if they weren't just renting from a landlord.

The Grain Elevators

There are a few things I think of when someone mentions Buffalo to me.  The over exaggerated amount of snowfall we receive, chicken wings, the ever unimpressive Bills, the hopeful Sabres and the historic Erie Canal and the Grain Elevators.  These grain elevators were invented in the area in the mid 1800's as a way to move grain up to the top stories of the silos where it was stored along the waterfront in downtown Buffalo.  This is also why they are called elevators, because they elevated the grain to the top of the silos where it was stored until it was moved to either ships going west through the Great Lakes or, more often, to barges taking the Erie Canal towards New York.

These elevators became the primary part of the skyline of Buffalo, however, the ones we are used to seeing are only a small number of them.  Originally they were made out of wood, not concrete, but this also proved to be disastrous.  A side product of moving so much grain on a daily basis also brings so safety issues.  The dust created by some of these grains, when in a high enough concentration in the air, becomes very flammable.  So as these buildings were made of wood with such a high concentration of flammable material, many fires ensued on an almost daily basis.  There were so may of these fires that insurance companies would not insure the elevators.  This lead to concrete and brick.  The concrete was much less flammable and could therefore be insured.  I also mention brick because some of the elevators were even enclosed in a brick building.  Below is a good and only example left here in Buffalo:

Unfortunately for this one, it is in great disrepair and the owner is not putting any money into the upkeep of it.  In fact, every year, they put in a request to the city to tear it down and every year their request is denied due to it being a National Historical Site, Hooray National Historical Society!!!

Now, you may ask yourself "how do they work?"  This is a good question,  although they did greatly help in making the business of the waterfront much more efficient, they did not eliminate the need for men.  These men, mainly the Irish, would shovel the grain off of the ships and onto a vertical conveyor belt that had buckets attached to it.  This conveyor would then lift (elevate) the grain to the top of the silos and fill them from there.  Here a couple of pictures depicting the buckets and conveyor:

This tour was also very informative about a couple of things.  For how can you talk about grain elevators and not about the Erie Canal.  Because of the Canal as well as the Great Lakes, Buffalo became a crossroads for a lot of materials.  These two major waterways were the main highway of the United States before the iron horse and the railway began.  With all of this material flowing through the area, there was great need for storage.  These elevators were then invented and became used for a number of different things, mainly different grains but they were also heavily used for concrete.  In fact there is still a concrete manufacturer on the Buffalo River that uses one of the elevators to store dry concrete.  Also located on the river, right where it enters the inner harbor is a General Mills plant.  It is because of plant that I wish you had smell-o-vision through your computer.  When the wind blows right, you can smell the cereals that they are baking in the plant all along the waterfront of the Buffalo River.  It is no joke that the area smells like Cheerio's what a great smell, truly the smell of home to me.