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| Buffalo Apartment Locator Services : Buffalo Apartments |  | Contents | |
| History |
| The early history of Buffalo |
| Most of western New York was granted by Charles
II of England to the Duke of York, but the first European settlement
in what is now Erie County was by the French, at the mouth of
Buffalo Creek in 1758. Its buildings were destroyed a year later
because of an impending British attack. The British took control
of the entire region in 1763, at the conclusion of the French
and Indian War. |
| The first American to settle in present day Buffalo
was Cornelius Winney, who set up a log cabin store there in
1789 for trading with the Native American community. Dutch investors
purchased the area as part of the Holland Land Purchase, and
parcels were sold through the Holland Land Company's office
in Batavia, New York, starting in 1801. The village was initially
called New Amsterdam. In 1808 the new Niagara County, New York
was formed (including what is now Erie County), and newly renamed
Buffalo became its county seat. By 1811, the predominantly Anglo-American
village had grown to 500 people. |
| Buffalo in the 19th century |
| Around 1804 the future city was planned by Joseph
Ellicott, a principal agent of the Holland Land Company. |
| In 1810 the Town of Buffalo was formed from the
western part of the Town of Clarence while still part of Niagara
County. On December 30, 1813, during the War of 1812, British
troops and their Native American allies captured the village
of Buffalo and burned much of it to the ground. Buffalo was
rebuilt and re-established as a town in 1816. In 1818 the eastern
part of the town was lost to form the Town of Amherst, and in
1839, the northern part of the Town of Buffalo became the Town
of Black Rock. |
| Upon the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825,
Buffalo became the western end of the 524-mile waterway starting
at New York City. At the time Buffalo had a population of about
2,400 people; with the increased commerce of the canal, the
population boomed and Buffalo became a city in 1832. Buffalo
was re-incorporated as a city in 1853, at which time it had
some 10,000 people. The re-incorporation included the Village
and Town of Black Rock, which had been Buffalo's early rival
for the canal terminus. |
| Buffalo was a terminus of the Underground Railroad,
an informal series of safe houses for runaway slaves who had
escaped from the U. S. South in the mid-19th century. After
hiding at the Michigan Street Baptist Church, the slaves could
take a ferry to Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada and freedom. |
| Several U.S. presidents have connections with
Buffalo. Millard Fillmore took up permanent residence in Buffalo
in 1822 before he became president. Grover Cleveland lived in
Buffalo from 1854 until 1882, and became mayor of the city.
William McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901 at the Pan-American
Exposition in Buffalo, and died in Buffalo on the 14th. Theodore
Roosevelt was then sworn in on September 14th, 1901 at the Wilcox
Mansion (now the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic
Site), becoming one of the few presidents to be sworn in outside
of Washington DC. |
| Buffalo in the 20th century |
| At the turn of the century, Buffalo was a growing
city with a burgeoning economy. Immigrants came from Ireland,
Italy, Germany, and Poland to work in the steel and grain mills
which had taken advantage of the city's critical location at
the junction of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal. Hydroelectric
power harnessed from nearby Niagara Falls made Buffalo the first
American city to enjoy widespread electric power. |
Main Street and Lafayette Square, Buffalo, from a 1922
postcard |
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| The opening of the Peace Bridge linking Buffalo
with Fort Erie, Ontario on 7 August 1927 was an occasion for
significant celebrations. Those in attendance included Edward,
Prince of Wales (later to become Edward VIII of the United Kingdom),
his brother Prince Albert George (later George VI), British
Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, Canada's Prime Minister W.L.
Mackenzie King, US Vice President Charles G. Dawes, and New
York governor Alfred E. Smith. |
| Buffalo's new City Hall was dedicated on July
1, 1932. |
The city hall of Buffalo, NY - an art deco masterpiece |
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| The city's importance declined in the later 20th
Century for several reasons, perhaps the most devastating being
the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1957. Goods which
had previously passed through Buffalo could now bypass it using
a series of canals and locks, reaching the ocean via the St.
Lawrence River. The city, which boasted over half a million
people at its peak, has seen its population decline by some
50 percent, as industries shut down and people left the Rust
Belt for the more moderate winters and air-conditioned summers
of the South and Southwest. |
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