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For those who want to know what downtown Buffalo was like in the 1950's, take a trip to Burlington Vermont. The first thing my wife and I said was, "this reminds us of what Buffalo was like in the 1950's". Similar climate, but what a difference. There where people everywhere, families and children having a great time. For those that were not around in the 1950's that's what Buffalo was.
I remember load of shopping: WT Grants, AM&A's, JN Adams, Kobackers, Kresge, Kleinhans, Woolworths and Bergers were all downtown. My mom didn't drive so we took the #8 Main St bus all the time.
You can find some locally owned stores or lesser known chains in Downtowns or select city neighborhoods, but many of those (regional/national)stores listed aren’t around in just about any Downtown anywhere.
Last edited by ckhthankgod; 01-05-2019 at 10:17 AM..
Everybody moved from the city to the burbs as well.
Agreed, shopping centers/plazas became the rage in the 50's, too. Cities were desperate to get people into downtowns to shop, so they made efforts in the 60's, but by then it was already too late.
Shopping center/plazas made sense as residents moved outwards, made no sense to have to go back downtown every time you needed a loaf of bread or a dry cleaner.
Shopping center/plazas made sense as residents moved outwards, made no sense to have to go back downtown every time you needed a loaf of bread or a dry cleaner.
No one ever "went downtown" for a loaf of bread or a dry cleaner. People went to the corner stores (delicatessens in Buffalo old-speak) or a nearby cleaners. I would guess that there are less that 1/4 of these kinds of stores left, but there are still hundreds of corner stores/7-11s/delis/bodegas/mini-marts etc in the city, but fewer cleaners since wash-n-wear become a thing in the 70s.
Large supermarkets and corporate minimarts killed many of the small local owned delicatessens, though. As late as the early 70s there used to be 4 active delicatessens on Tacoma alone between Virgil and Colvin (Lucy's, Sandler's, Jerry, and Savall's) and one couldn't go more than 2-3 blocks anywhere in the city without passing a small shop. Not enough walking business to keep them all open once larger markets and corporate corner stores (like Convenient Food Mart) opened. Where people still walk, like in Riverside, you still see streets with multiple small stores.
Because most new suburbs were so spread out, a store needed to be fed from a larger geographical area than the dense city in order to make money, which meant that they required drivers/parking lots. So now, no one in the burbs can just walk 2-3 blocks to get a loaf of bread or cleaners, but most must own a car and drive several blocks or sometimes miles.
Today, in my old city neighborhood though, I could still walk to the cleaners and probably at least a dozen (if not more) places to get a loaf of bread. Just not 1 per block.
My own rose-colored glasses of the past aren't as rosy as some others, though, as I remember my (now popular) North Buffalo neighborhood in the 1960s as a crowded and fairly dirty and sometimes dangerous place to grow up. Buffalo was criss-crossed with railroads and heavy industries through many, if not most of the neighborhoods at the time, along with abandoned industrial sites which were a common arson target. Our dishes would jingle in the cabinets whenever one of the multiple trains passed nearby. My older siblings talked about hearing cattle moaning on the rail cars as they passed the houses on the way to the Buffalo Stockyards. All the houses were filled or overcrowded with us boomer kids, with typically 4 or more kids along with parents, grandparents and sometimes aunts and uncles crowded into 3 bedroom houses or shared doubles. I shared a 9-1/2 by 10 foot bedroom with 2 brothers, but at least we had bunk beds - I knew many kids who had to share beds with their siblings. My oldest brother smoked in the bedroom. Coal smoke from industries (and even our school) would sometimes drop on stagnant days, but thankfully I missed the use of coal-ash on icy streets that was common in the 1950s. Is that what Burlington is like today?
I was trying to say that these new neighborhoods needed shopping that was convenient to them, as there often wasn't an existing town nearby a strip mall replicated the blocks of stores in the cities. My town was no different with the smaller shops but we didn't have an A&P at one end which in retrospect was a small store by todays standards. I found a lot of the mom & pop businesses ended when the kids didn't want to take over working 15 hour day for little return, they went to college and moved to these new burbs. After all we always want our kids to do better than we did.
Your honest reflection is refreshing, a good friend basically said the same thing about Richmond "she said the living choices in Richmond were old, drafty and grimy why would'nt someone want to move to a new house in the burbs for the same money".
I think the rise of the large supermarkets was inevitable at least here the chains are represented in the city but could do with a greater presence.
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