“The right to have access to every building in the city by private motorcar in an age when everyone possesses such a vehicle, is actually the right to destroy the city.” –Lewis Mumford, 1964

Washington Street, at the corner of Swan Street, was the picture of a complete downtown in 1934. In this photograph, looking north from Swan Street, multistory buildings stretch for blocks without any gap. Visible, from Swan to South Division, are signs for the Waldorf Lunch, Fred Koehler rubber stamps, Serra & Piazza barber shop, Washington Bowling Alley (on the third floor), Home Dairy Co. cafeteria, Derner’s coffee shop, and Jimmie Doyle’s Buffet. North of South Division Street are several substantial loft buildings—one of which, the eight-story Lincoln Building, contains yet another upper-story bowling alley.

These mixed-use buildings were the ingredients for a stimulating, inviting, and useful city. After 1950, however, hundreds of such buildings were destroyed for automobile storage facilities, highway interchanges, and walled-off office blocks, resulting in the “dead zones” that now make up most of downtown. The physical transformation was deliberate and methodical, driven by downtown elites, promoted by the press, enabled by federal and state programs, and enforced by zoning laws that required off-street parking. Only one building in this two-block stretch—the Washington Square Tavern—still exists today.

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