Newsletter of the
Preservation Coalition of Erie County (Home Page)

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June 1995

EVEN MORE NEWS


The Carousel factory gets vintage band organs

We don’t mean the pickled entrails of John Philip Sousa’s band. The Carousel Society of the Niagara Frontier, which operates the Herschell Carousel Factory Museum in North Tonawanda, has acquired three band organs manufactured in North Tonawanda and much of the Wurlitzer Company’s music roll manufacturing equipment. The equipment is in operating condition, and the museum plans demonstrations for visitors.

Close call for AM&A warehouses

Judging by Buffalo’s healthy stock of abandoned department stores, the recently vacated AM&A flagship at Main and Eagle is in no danger of demolition. Unsympathetic rehab, yes, demo, no. Much more threatened, and much more useful in the near term to Buffalo would be the four structurally separate buildings on Washington and Eagle streets that formed the old AM&A warehouse.
This despite the fact that the new Robert Adam ramp, named for one of the Adams family patriarchs, is located 75 feet from the stores rear entrance. Now, of course, the argument will be that in order to attract developers to the Great Tan Whale, the warehouse buildings must be demo’d for surface parking.

30-mile-point lighthouse on New Stamp; Friends group seeks members

A group of interested citizens and state park personnel met on May 17 in the Niagara County town of Somerset to form a Friends of 30 Mile Point Lighthouse group. The lighthouse is on the Lake Ontario Shore in Golden Hill State Park, about 40 miles northwest of Buffalo.

Thirty Mile Point Lighthouse was built in 1875 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is 60 feet high and has an attached keeper’s cottage. In 1990, a Environmental Quality Bond Act historic preservation grant was awarded to State Parks for repairs.

Funds raised by the Friends group would go to the National Heritage Trust Fund, which in turn makes grants administered by the state. After you go on the Preservation Coalition’s Richardson tour or Photo Workshop on June 24, you might want to head out to Golden Hill for the ‘Stamp Celebration.’ Admission is free, and there will be tours and displays of the lighthouse, music, and omnipresent food until 4pm. For more info on the Friends or the festivities, call park manager Tom Harris: 795-3885.

Engine #2, Ladder 9 faces closure

Buffalo’s oldest existing firehouse, the 1870s Engine 2 at 306 Jersey Street at Plymouth, will likely be closed in a consolidation move. The Fire Department is seeking to build a new firehouse and department headquarters at Virginia street and Elmwood Avenue. Partially vacated will be the Art Deco Fire Headquarters complex on Court Street behind City Hall. Both the Second Empire Jersey Street house and the 1931 headquarters are local landmarks. Definite plans for the future of Engine 2 are not set, but if it is deemed surplus, the city will take steps to sell it, rather than demolish it. The house was originally built by a private volunteer fire company (Buffalo did not become a professional department until 1880). Much of it remains intact, including the horse exercise yard in the rear. The haylofts, one of which is used as a weight room, still open out to the exercise yard. It pretty much fits everyone’s image of what a firehouse is, with the flag flapping, firefighters sitting out on the bench in good weather, gleaming machines at the ready. The brass pole is still in use.

Plea for those old-time stadiums and towns

Buffalo was the first city in the nation to have a historicist baseball stadium (because of those unreasonable preservationists, thank you very much), and now Buffalo has a historic district, the Cobblestone District, next to its new hockey arena (which, lamentably, owes more to the Houston Astrodome than Ed Rudnicki’s blacksmith shop). Now the idea of traditionalist architecture has invaded the sports pages. On two consecutive days in May, two different writers spoke of the need for… “The irony is that when the city and the team get around to building a new ballpark, it will be Forbes Field. Three Rivers Stadium, the cookie-cutter multi-purpose edifice, has outlived its usefulness. Circumstances cry out for the new “old-fashioned” park of the type that has been a huge hit in Baltimore, Cleveland, and Texas… To enhance the Pirates as an attraction and make it possible for a new owner to flourish, officials know it’s imperative to find a way to build a new Forbes Field.”

OK, Buffalo has the granddaddy of new “old-fashioned” stadiums? But what about the city itself? George Vecsey writes, “Bear in mind, you are hearing from a man who recently did three days of hard time in Indianapolis, looking for a real bran muffin, or something to do. Sport needs its exotica. Sport needs its historic walled provincial capitals.” Now, aren’t you glad Buffalo saved some local flavor to go with our new arena? Wouldn’t it be nice to have some compatible brick infill along some recreated historic streets in the area? It is a shame the Sabres have eyes only for asphalt.