In 1964, the corner of Main and Eagle streets was the busiest in downtown Buffalo. More pedestrians, according to a study by the Buffalo Division of Planning, crossed this intersection than any other. Here, in a photograph by the Department of Urban Renewal, Eagle Street is seen looking west from Main Street. Signs are visible, from left to right, for Regal Shoes, Brownie’s Army and Navy Store, Monogram Restaurant, DuBois Tavern, Laube Cafeteria, Commando Bar and Sandwich Shop, Otto Ulbrich’s Stationers and Booksellers, Sherman’s Liquor Store, Wagner’s Jewelry, Standard Shoe Repair Co., and Ace Lock Service.

By 1965, this block and several adjacent blocks were being sent to the landfill as part of the Main Place Renewal Project, an effort spearheaded by the Greater Buffalo Development Foundation and City of Buffalo to bring a suburban shopping mall to the heart of downtown. The project had been hatched in 1960, when AM&A’s President Robert B. Adam announced his intentions to lead a “massive rebuilding effort in the heart of downtown, with a miniature Rockefeller Center at its nucleus.” As chairman of the Foundation’s Downtown Committee, Adam had commissioned the Arthur D. Little Co. to conduct a downtown retail study that pointed to a witch’s brew of forces supposedly undermining the downtown retail core: the presence of new “ethnic groups” in surrounding neighborhoods, declining “crowd appearance” along downtown streets, and the existence of dozens of “marginal retail establishments” such as those along Eagle Street.

The Main Place Renewal Project, to displace three blocks, cut off Eagle and Niagara streets, and flatten Shelton Square, was announced on January 16, 1965. “The project is provident of the future of the city,” said Chamber of Commerce president John Galvin, “and represents the best thinking of both the business community and the city government.” By 1968, the Main Place Mall opened, offering what the cheerleading Buffalo Evening News called a “shopping climate so attractive to Mrs. Buffalo and Mrs. Niagara Frontier that she will not be able to resist going there to shop.”