Local

Looking Backward: Caption This, circa 1960

by / Feb. 22, 2017 12am EST

Every now and then, a photograph pops up without any information attached. No inscription is included on the back, no date is known, and the intent of the photograph is lost to history. But a little context and imagination can fill in potential blanks. This photograph, from the archives of the Buffalo Courier Express on file at the Butler Library, was likely snapped around 1960. Four finely attired men point in the direction of something, perhaps toward the site of a future project. Behind them is a four block area of Lower Main Street that Erie County Executive B. John Tutuska called a “rundown, disheveled, unkempt, and neglected area,” in 1968 razed for Marine Midland Center. In the upper right is the Niagara Thruway, the blacktop likely still fresh only a short time after its completion in 1959. What is going on here? What caption would you give this photograph?

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