Should it be saved? I believe so. But through private efforts, not taxpayer money.
Posted on 11/15/2008 8:32:27 PM PST by Peelod
ONE of the most cynical clichés in architecture is that poverty is good for preservation. The poor don’t bulldoze historic neighborhoods to make way for fancy new high-rises.
That assumption came to mind when I stepped off a plane here recently. Buffalo is home to some of the greatest American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with major architects like Henry Hobson Richardson, Frederick Law Olmsted, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright building marvels here. Together they shaped one of the grandest early visions of the democratic American city.
Yet Buffalo is more commonly identified with the crumbling infrastructure, abandoned homes and dwindling jobs that have defined the Rust Belt for the past 50 years. And for decades its architecture has seemed strangely frozen in time.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Its too bad that a little bit of beauty is in the midst of a whole lot of ugly.
There are areas here that we won’t drive through day or night.
BFLO PING
I don’t understand why there is a problem in Buffalo. Hillary promised 250,000 new jobs to the region in 2000. Haven’t they arrived yet? After all they re-elected her for a 2nd term, she must have brought in at least 50,000 out of the 250,000 she said she would bring in through her connections? Hey, not a problem, she’ll get them now with Obama in, she can’t blame W anymore. Cheer up Buffalo, Change is coming?
It’s interesting to consider why these areas were settled in the first place, much less developed into major cities, when the weather is so horrendous. The fact that fine buildings were put up is a testament to man’s stubbornness.
Should it be saved? I believe so. But through private efforts, not taxpayer money.
People around here comment on the absence of hurricanes, floods, brain-boiling heat, landslides, county-wide fires ("Not much of an inferno today."), and bone-desiccating drought. The environment, however, is polluted by some of the worst politicians in the country.
When the climate tempering Lake Erie gives us fluffy water, we push it out of the way, play in it and party.
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Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
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***People around here comment on the absence of hurricanes, floods, brain-boiling heat, landslides, county-wide fires (”Not much of an inferno today.”), and bone-desiccating drought. The environment, however, is polluted by some of the worst politicians in the country.
When the climate tempering Lake Erie gives us fluffy water, we push it out of the way, play in it and party.***
I grew up an hour west of you guys; we always said that the best view of Buffalo was squinting along the cannons in Fort Erie. :)
Lake Erie is so much better now than 25 years ago; Niagara Falls is so much less junky; and the Welland Canal is full of ships.
I get back every now and again. We were there this summer; my littlest ones hadn’t been there before. A beautiful area along the whole Niagara River.
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