Local

Looking Backward: Main Street, 1964

by / Feb. 7, 2017 4pm EST

The year is 1964, and work is about to begin on the Main Place Renewal Project, which would raze eight blocks and 81 buildings in an effort to bring new life to downtown. In this photograph taken by the Department of Urban Renewal, Main Street is seen looking south from the upper levels of the Tishman Building. Still present are the Erie County Savings Bank, Kobacker’s, AM&A’s, and dozens of mixed-use buildings that would be replaced by the Main Place Mall, Edward A. Rath County Office Building, and Church Street Extension Mall. The Little Report, commissioned in 1960 by the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation, argued that the downtown shopping core was threatened by new “ethnic groups,” declining “crowd appearance,” and “marginal retail establishments.” The report called for extending the city’s “frontal assault” on residential blight to the “commercial blight and the decay that is sapping the competitive vitality and appeal” of Main Street. The City of Buffalo complied. In 1965, the wrecking ball would start swinging.

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