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Image courtesy of the E. H. Butler Library at SUNY Buffalo State.
Image courtesy of the E. H. Butler Library at SUNY Buffalo State.

Looking Backward: Ellicott District Redevelopment Project, 1964

by / Feb. 20, 2018 11pm EST
The First Hartford Realty Corporation was among the first to test the real estate market at the Ellicott District Redevelopment Project, a renewal project that razed 29 blocks of the East Side between 1959 and 1960. In 1964, the company built six model homes on one of the cleared sites along Michigan Avenue between South Division and Swan streets. “The six new houses,” wrote the Buffalo Courier Express on May 4, 1965, “with fully-seeded lawns, look much like homes in a modern suburban development although they are only a few blocks from downtown Buffalo.” A vestige of the old neighborhood—a series of Civil War era row houses and shops—is visible along the south side of Swan Street. Neither these buildings nor the First Hartford single-family homes stand today.

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