Upstate New York and Canada: Buffalo (9.10.24)

The historic and the amusing.  On September 10, 2024, we spent the day in Buffalo, New York.  Of course, we tried Buffalo wings at the restaurant where they were created.  We also searched for glimmers of renaissance in a city that had been so great, during the days of the Erie Canal, and now was trying to create a new legend for itself.

We began our day at the Buffalo Maritime Park, the largest inland naval park in the US, and an attraction the City of Buffalo created when it found itself with a few surplus ships. The ships include the USS Little Rock, a light cruiser, the USS The Sullivans, a destroyer, and the USS Croaker, a submarine.

USS The Sullivans was named after the five brothers who all died in the Pacific during World War II.  The Navy had tried to separate them for safety, but they wanted to serve together.

With Dave's background as an Air Force officer and my parents both serving as naval officers during World War II, we are interested in wars, planes, guns, and ships of all sorts.  We crawled up, down, and through all the ships, paying special attention to the guns and missiles.  My dad taught naval officers how to shoot the big guns on their ships at the officers' training school at Princeton during World War II.

With my claustrophobia, I couldn't imagine sleeping on the stacked cots in the enlisted men's quarters.

The red "rising suns" painted on the destroyer's hull showed how many Japanese ships it had sunk during World War II.

We next took a bus tour around Buffalo.  Our guide cautioned us, "Don't ask me questions.  This is a performance and I'll lose my place."  He was, indeed, witty, but I would have preferred to ask questions!  We drove through the city, with its beautiful, 1930s Art Deco buildings, built before Buffalo became a Rust Belt city.  

Our guide described the new industries Buffalo is developing, including many research hospitals and medical technology companies.  We passed this "Innovation Center", which showed the efforts Buffalo is making to become prosperous again.

We stopped at the old Buffalo insane asylum, given new life as a stylish hotel.

Our guide also leads paranormal tours.  He hinted that the former insane asylum is a great place for ghosts, but he said he couldn't say more because the City of Buffalo was subsidizing our bus tour.  I suppose stories about ghosts in the City's new Richardson Hotel might scare the guests!

After our bus tour, Dave and I visited Buffalo's Art Deco City Hall.

The entryway had beautifully decorated floors, ceilings, and murals.

The decoration reminded me of the beautiful Art Deco buildings Dave and I visited on architecture tours of Chicago.

From the 24th floor of City Hall, we could see all over Buffalo.

We could see Lake Erie, which had once fueled Buffalo's prosperity.  Buffalo stevedores unloaded ships bringing goods from the Midwest and loaded them onto canal boats which took the goods through the Erie Canal to Albany and, from there, down the Hudson River to New York City.  When the St. Lawrence Seaway was connected to the Great Lakes, the Erie Canal was used only for pleasure boats.

There was a statue of Millard Fillmore, a native Buffalo son, in front of City Hall.  "Fillmore," the first capital of the Utah Territory, was named after him.

We also stopped at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, where Teddy Roosevelt was abruptly sworn in as U.S. president after President McKinley was assassinated.

Teddy Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo and had to borrow a black suit coat in which to be inaugurated!

We finished the day eating Buffalo wings at the restaurant where they were invented.