“Stroll along its bustling sidewalks on a fine afternoon or take a William Street car on a Saturday night. Throngs will be pouring into William Street from the cross streets, which in this entrance will turn to feeding veins. Men, women, and children, all bent on securing groceries, clothing, furniture, artisan work, relief from physicians, or pleasure and entertainment at the theaters and nickelodeons along the avenue. Glance into the stores and offices along William Street on this occasion. There will be seen bustling clerks, whirring coffee mills, clanging change carriers, chatting, smiling customers all wearing the smile which denotes satisfaction with their purchases.” —Buffalo Illustrated Times, June 21, 1908

William Street was called, in a 1908 Buffalo Illustrated Times account, “the great East Side’s greatest thoroughfare.” Here, in a photograph taken in about 1911, is the corner of William and Emslie streets, looking east from Emslie. On the left is the Siegrist & Fraley department store opened in 1891, the same year as the introduction of the electric streetcar, visible at center. On the right, signs are visible for John Tilma’s drug store, the Erion Piano Company, J.F. Berner’s hardware store, and the Savoy Theatre, opened in 1911, closed in 1956, and the only building on the block that stands today. Jacob J. Siegrist of Siegrist & Fraley claimed that due to its “city-wide reputation for sound bargains,” William Street in 1891 was “rated as second only to Main Street.” Forty years later, the William Street crowds had largely vanished as the East Side’s center of gravity shifted to Broadway. With the opening of the New York Central Terminal and Clinton/Bailey Market, and extension of William Street from Michigan Avenue to Lafayette Square, the Buffalo Journal of Commerce predicted new prosperity for William Street. “Out of what seemed inevitable defeat,” the journal wrote in August 1929, “William Street emerges victorious!”

Image courtesy of The Buffalo History Museum. Used by permission.