Buffalo

Understand

Buffalo is New York State's second-largest city, with (as of 2020) a population of 278,000 in the city proper and 1.1 million in the metropolitan area. Buffalo is the cultural and economic center of the Western New York region. Once an industrial powerhouse, the city suffered the effects of deindustrialization in the 20th century and developed a reputation as a stagnant working-class city. Buffalo's economy turned around in the early 21st century with the arrival of cleaner, high-tech industries and services, yet the city retains a palpable sense of its history as an important industrial center, with majestic historic buildings and sites telling the story of its rise, fall, and resurgence.

History

Beginnings Though the area had been settled by the Iroquois since well before Columbus and was visited periodically by French fur trappers beginning in the 17th century, Buffalo's history begins about 1789, when Cornelius Winney set up a trading post at the mouth of the Buffalo River. At the time, this site was still far beyond the frontier of white settlement. It was not until 1793 that the Holland Land Company, a syndicate of investors from the Netherlands, purchased the tract of Western New York wilderness that included Buffalo. Land agent Joseph Ellicott, who arrived at Winney's trading post in 1798, felt that it had the potential to be the site of a thriving city. He gave the name New Amsterdam to the village he laid out there, though it was soon renamed Buffalo after the adjacent river. Ellicott laid out a grand radial pattern of streets and public squares inspired by the one designed by his brother Andrew for Washington, D.C.; however, despite his lofty aspirations, Buffalo remained a tiny outpost whose main claim to fame during its very early history was as the site of several important military installations and battles during the War of 1812 (famously, the village was burnt to the ground by British troops in December 1813 as part of the Niagara Frontier Campaign of that war).

Growth Buffalo's status as a frontier backwater abruptly ended when, after a hotly contested dispute with the neighboring village of Black Rock (later annexed by Buffalo), Buffalo Harbor was designated as the western end of the Erie Canal, a great inland shipping lane extending westward 363 miles (584 km) from the Hudson River at Albany. The most ambitious work of infrastructure undertaken in the U.S. up to that time, the Erie Canal greatly lowered transportation costs and singlehandedly made large-scale settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians economically viabl

Getting there

By plane

1 Buffalo Niagara International Airport (BUF IATA), ☏ +1 716-630-6000. The Buffalo Niagara International Airport serves Buffalo as well as Niagara Falls, the rest of Western New York, Northwest Pennsylvania, and Southern Ontario. The airport is particularly popular with the latter group; Canadians looking for fares lower than those found at Toronto Pearson make up about 40% of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport's passengers. The Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served by American, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, and United, with about 110 nonstop flights per day to Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago (Midway and O'Hare), Dallas/Fort Worth, Denver, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers (seasonally), Jacksonville (seasonally), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami (seasonally), Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, Newark, New York (JFK and LaGuardia), Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh/Durham, Tampa, and Washington (Dulles and Reagan National). International flights are handled by low-cost charter carrier Vacation Express, with seasonal routes to Cancún, Montego Bay, and Punta Cana. (updated May 2021) From the airport, Buffalo is accessible via NFTA bus routes:

NFTA Metro Bus #24 — Genesee runs four different routes, three of which serve the airport. Bus #24B and Bus #24L run between the airport and Canalside via Genesee Street, also serving the Municipal Transportation Center. The latter of the two is advertised as a more convenient service with a limited number of intermediate stops, but in reality the difference in travel time between the L and the B is insignificant (42-43 minutes vs. 47-48 minutes), so it doesn't really matter which one you take. Express service is offered Monday through Friday by Bus #24X, with four inbound trips in the morning (leaving the airport at 6:03AM, 7:03AM, 7:33AM, and 8:03AM) and four outbound ones in the afternoon (leaving Canalside at 3:50PM, 4:20PM, 4:45PM, and 5:20PM). Travel time to and from the airport is about half an hour. Finally, if you plan to take the bus back to the airport at the end of your visit, make sure not to board Bus #24A, whose route ends at the city line in a not-very-nice neighborhood. In addition, the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served directly by a number of intercity bus lines; see the "By bus" section. All buses, NFTA and long-distance, are boarded at the bus lane on the east side of the terminal, on the arrivals level. This is also where Uber and Lyft (see "Ride sharing" section below) pick up. Buffalo Airport Taxi's stand, as well as a

Getting around

For most visitors to Buffalo, access to an automobile will prove extremely useful, although Buffalo's public transportation system provides access to the majority of the metropolitan area. Travelling around the city proper by public transit can be relatively hassle-free, especially on weekdays; however, transit riders travelling to the suburbs should be prepared for service that is infrequent (and, on the weekends, often non-existent).

By car In addition to the Interstate highways mentioned in the "Get In" section, Buffalo has several intraurban expressways useful to visitors:

The Kensington Expressway (NY 33) begins at the airport on Genesee Street, proceeding westward through the suburb of Cheektowaga and the East Side before turning southward and concluding downtown at Oak Street. The Scajaquada Expressway (NY 198) is a short highway that connects the Kensington Expressway with Interstate 190. The Scajaquada is a convenient route to the neighborhoods of Parkside and the Elmwood Village, the popular commercial strips of Hertel Avenue and Grant Street, as well as attractions like Delaware Park, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Buffalo History Museum, the Darwin D. Martin House, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center. The Buffalo Skyway (NY 5) begins downtown at I-190, extending southward parallel to the shore of Lake Erie with access to Gallagher Beach, Tifft Nature Preserve, and other Outer Harbor attractions. After passing over the Union Ship Canal via the Father Baker Bridge, the divided highway ends, but Route 5 continues as a wide, busy six-lane surface road (variously known as the Hamburg Turnpike, Lake Shore Road, or simply Route 5) that passes through the suburban areas of Lackawanna and Hamburg and continuing southward along the lake shore. Buffalo's highway system was designed for a city twice its size (a reflection of the population loss the area has undergone between the 1950s and today). As a result, the city does not suffer nearly as much from traffic congestion as other U.S. cities. Rush hour, such as it is, occurs on weekdays roughly from 6:30AM-9AM and from 4PM-6:30PM. A good rule of thumb the locals know is that, even at the height of rush hour, it generally takes no more than 30 minutes to drive from downtown to the outer edge of suburbia.

Rental cars Rental car facilities can be found mainly at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, and National all have offices directly on airport property, while the Buffalo locations of ACE and Fox Rent A Car operate out of the Quality Inn

See

For detailed listings of attractions, please see the respective district articles.

Museums Buffalo's wealth of cultural attractions is surprising given the city's somewhat small size. The museums here are many and varied, and are a point of pride for Buffalo's citizens. Arguably the most interesting among them are a great number of institutions that focus on the area's past.

1 Buffalo History Museum (Formerly the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society Museum), 25 Nottingham Ct (Metro Bus 20 or 32), ☏ +1 716-873-9644. Tu-Sa 10AM-5PM, W until 8PM, Su noon-5PM, Resource Center by appointment during business hours, Research Library W-Sa 1PM-5PM. Has by far the most extensive collection of artifacts relevant to the history of Buffalo and Western New York from pre-Columbian times to the present day. It was built for the Pan-American Exposition in 1901, so it is perhaps not surprising that the Exhibition is a particular focus of the exhibits. $7, seniors and students 13-21 $5, children 7-12 $2, members and children under 7 free. Research Library $7, free to members. 2 Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society Museum, 66 Erie St. (Metro Rail: Seneca), ☏ +1 716-849-0914. Th & Sa 10AM-3PM and by appointment. The shipping industry was greatly important to Buffalo's economy in earlier times, and the Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society's mission is to pay tribute to and increase awareness and appreciation of, that facet of local history. To that end, a wide variety of historic artifacts, old photographs, models, and interpretive materials relevant to the Great Lakes shipping trade are displayed in a warm and airy museum in what was once the offices of Howard H. Baker and Company, a ship chandlery that served Buffalo Harbor in the 19th century. Free. 3 Colored Musicians' Club Museum, 145 Broadway (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-855-9383. W-Sa 11AM-4PM or by appointment. Easily the most storied jazz club in the city, founded in 1918. The club continues to function as a venue for live jazz, but it also contains a museum with a range of artifacts and exhibits that detail the history of the club and of jazz music in Buffalo. $10; discounted tickets for children, senior citizens, teachers, and active military. 4 Nash House Museum, 36 Nash St (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-856-4490. Th Sa 11:30AM-4PM and by appointment. Once the home of Rev. Dr. J. Edward Nash, who was a personal friend of such luminaries of black history as Booker T. Washington and Adam Clayton Powell, and

Do

Festivals and events The festivals and events listed in this section take place at multiple venues city- or regionwide. For events specific to a particular venue or neighborhood, see the respective district articles. The lion's share of festivals and events in Buffalo take place during the warm months, naturally, but efforts have been made to expand the slate of offerings in winter as well.

Buffalo Greek Fest. Serves as the traditional start of the summer festival season and held each year at the beginning of June at the Hellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation on historic Delaware Avenue. Showcases the cuisine, traditional music and folk dances of Greece, along with cultural exhibits and architectural tours of the beautiful church. Galbani Buffalo Italian Heritage Festival. Live music, carnival rides, games, and attractions of all kinds on the first weekend in July. The star of the show is the food, with offerings from well-known Italian markets as well as demonstrations by chefs from local Italian restaurants. Dyngus Day. A traditional Polish holiday that falls on the Monday after Easter, Buffalo hosts the largest Dyngus Day celebration in the world at its New York Central Terminal. After a parade, traditional Polish food and (even more popularly) drink are served in the old dining room, with polka bands attracting revelers to the dance floor. Celebrations are also held at St. Stanislaus, Bishop & Martyr Church, the Adam Mickiewicz Library, as well as Polish bars and taverns. Buffalo Pride Festival. Kicks off with a flag-raising ceremony in Niagara Square, continues with a "Gay 5K" footrace through the streets of downtown, picks up intensity in Allentown with the Dyke March and a raucous street festival (21+ admitted), culminates in Canalside with the Pride Festival itself (a family-friendly event), and closes out with a beach party at Woodlawn Beach State Park in Hamburg. National Garden Festival. This five-week-long garden festival has participating residents design and maintain beautiful gardens in their front yards for walkers to enjoy. In addition, there are bus tours of the area's various urban farms, nurseries, and community gardens, weekday open gardens, speakers, symposia, and the popular Front Yard Garden Competition. The Atlantic magazine cited this as the best event of its kind in the nation. Buffalo Infringement Festival. This celebration of genre-defying, boundary-pushing DIY art and spectacle takes place annually on the last week of July and the first week of August. Displays of music, dance, theater and visual arts, as

Buy

For listings of individual shops, please see the respective district articles. Buffalo has a number of interesting shopping districts, each with its own flavor.

The Elmwood Village extends along Elmwood Avenue from Buffalo State College south to North Street. This area contains a variety of small shops with an "independent" feel — you won't find many national chain stores or restaurants here. Elmwood Avenue's specialty is upscale clothing boutiques catering to fashion-forward urbanites; it's also a good place to seek out locally produced art and jewelry, quirky gifts, and some of the finest dining Buffalo has to offer. Allentown is centered along the entire length of Allen Street from Main to Wadsworth Streets, but especially west of Linwood Avenue. Adjacent, and similar in some ways, to the Elmwood Village, Allentown has more of a bohemian and artsy vibe compared with the college students and yuppies that frequent Elmwood. Amid the proliferation of hipster bars, you'll see a lot of antique shops, small art galleries, and clothing stores with a more urban style. Hertel Avenue, between Delaware and Parkside Avenues in North Buffalo, is home to a growing assortment of small shops. Hertel is the place to come to browse art galleries, shop for antique and contemporary furniture and home decor, mellow out in head shops such as Terrapin Station, and sample Middle Eastern cuisine at a variety of restaurants and bodegas at the west end of the strip, near Delaware Avenue. Grant Street, which runs north-to-south through the Upper West Side, is the main thoroughfare of two revitalized shopping areas. The stretch between (approximately) West Delavan Avenue and Hampshire Street, centered on West Ferry Street, is a commercial strip known as Grant-Ferry. A "melting pot" of Hispanics, Somalis, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Eastern Europeans and Buffalo State College students, Grant-Ferry is home to a collection of ethnic food markets, clothing stores, and so forth. Grant-Amherst, a short distance north at the corner of Amherst Street, boasts a collection of art galleries, antique shops and restaurants within walking distance of Buffalo State College. Visitors should be warned, however, that the neighborhoods around Grant Street are still a good deal "grittier" than places like the Elmwood Village and Allentown. In the suburbs can be found the usual lineup of malls and plazas. The largest mall in the area is the Walden Galleria, on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga, 10 minutes from downtown via the Kensington Expressway and/or Interstate 90. Others include the Boulevard Mall in A

Eat

Local specialties

No visit is complete without trying some Buffalo wings. Oh, sure, everyone thinks they've tried them, but nothing compares to the ones you can get in Buffalo. (But please don't call them "Buffalo wings"; around here, they're just "wings".) The classic recipe, as originated in 1964 at the Anchor Bar on Main Street, is a chicken wing fried up crisp, then tossed in a mixture of butter and hot sauce (Frank's Red Hot for best results) in varying proportions according to your spice tolerance, then optionally finished on the grill for a bit of extra char. The debate over who serves the best wings in town is endless, but as a general rule, head to one of Buffalo's many off-the-beaten-path corner bars. If you're not a fan of Buffalo sauce, virtually anywhere with wings on the menu will offer barbecue sauce as an alternative. Other varieties you'll come across frequently include garlic parmesan, lemon pepper (especially popular among Buffalo's African-American community), honey mustard, and "Italian style" (i.e. breaded and smothered in marinara sauce). Or for something truly unique, head to South Buffalo, which has its own homegrown style of wings. In much the same vein: if you enjoy chicken fingers, there's scarcely a better place for you to visit than Buffalo. Like any other city, you can find them served as a meal in themselves, but here they also come chopped up and used as pizza toppings, in tacos, on salads, and — above all — in the form of chicken finger subs: whole chicken fingers slathered in Buffalo wing sauce and used as the filling in a submarine sandwich. A variant is the stinger sub, basically a steak hoagie plus chicken fingers. Any sub shop or pizzeria in town should be able to make you a chicken finger sub, but for the stinger, the odds-on favorite is local chain Jim's Steakout, where it was invented. Outside the realm of deep-fried chicken, another local specialty is beef on weck, a sandwich that consists of slices of slow-roasted beef layered on a kümmelweck roll (a Kaiser roll topped with caraway seeds and Kosher salt) and traditionally garnished with horseradish. Any place that serves hot sandwiches is likely to have beef on weck on the menu, but the two restaurants whose beef on weck has the best reputation are Schwabl's (on Center Road in West Seneca) and Charlie the Butcher. Texas hots, despite their name, were not invented in Texas, but in Buffalo, where they began as a unique offering in the area's Greek restaurants (Seneca Texas Hots claims to be the first to serve them, though this is a matter of some dispute). The

Drink & nightlife

For bar listings, please see the respective district articles. As an enduringly blue-collar town, Buffalo has a fairly dense concentration of bars and taverns. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Buffalo is among the top ten cities in the United States in number of bars per capita. Drinkers in Buffalo aren't limited to rough-and-tumble working-class watering holes, though — although there are plenty of those. Buffalo has a number of more upscale nightlife districts, each with a distinct character, from the dance clubs of Chippewa Street, to the hipster dives of Allentown, to the cocktail bars in the Theater District, to the yuppie hangouts of the Elmwood Village, to the historic taverns of the Cobblestone District and the Old First Ward. Last call in Buffalo is 4AM. For this reason, many bars in Buffalo don't get going until sometime after midnight on weekends. Weekend nights usually see the police out in force in Buffalo's nightlife districts, searching for drunk drivers. You can often find taxis lingering around the bars, but competition for a cab can be fierce and rates are often high. Uber and Lyft are often a better option in these cases.

Coffee shops Coffee culture is alive and well in Buffalo. Though Starbucks outlets are a dime a dozen here as elsewhere in the country, locally owned mom-and-pop cafés have always been where it's at for Buffalo's trendy set, and there are three principal neighborhoods where you'll find them. Downtown — particularly the Theater District and the 500 block of Main Street — sports a handful of grab-and-go places for office workers in need of a quick caffeine fix, Allentown's coffee shops are great places to lounge in an ambience that's trendy yet not stiflingly pretentious, and at the far end of the spectrum, the off-the-beaten-path coffeeshop scene on the West Side cranks the hipster factor up to 11, with an atmosphere and clientele such that you might wonder whether you're in Buffalo or Brooklyn. There are a couple local coffeeshop chains of note:

Ashker's. Features a copious slate of smoothies of various styles: regular (various combinations of puréed fruits), "Fusion" (a healthier alternative where vegetables such as kale, golden beet, and spinach enter the picture), and "Fortified" (in full health-food mode here, featuring chia seed, turmeric, maca, and other trendy "superfoods"). Cold-pressed fruit juices, espresso drinks, and other beverages, as well as a selection of sandwiches, salads, and an all-day breakfast menu, are also available. (updated Nov 2017) SPoT Coffee. It's not exactly a local co

Sleep

For more detailed hotel listings, please see the respective district articles. There is a wide range of high-quality lodging to choose from in both Buffalo and its suburbs, encompassing hotels, motels, B&Bs, hostels, and guest houses. Many beautiful but vacant old buildings have restored and repurposed as hotels — so if you're staying downtown, be prepared for a real Gilded Age treat. In suburbia, budget and mid-priced chains can be found primarily around highway interchanges. Two especially big clusters of hotels exist just south of the University of Buffalo's North Campus in Amherst and around the Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

Budget

Mid-range

1 Hotel Lafayette, 391 Washington St. (Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-853-1505. Check-in: 3PM, check-out: noon. An architectural masterpiece in the French Renaissance Revival style built in 1903 from a design by Louise Blanchard Bethune, the Hotel Lafayette is on Lafayette Square in the heart of downtown. Flat-panel TVs, banquet facilities, restaurant, coffeeshop, and two bars/lounges. Suites are available that contain full kitchens with refrigerator and stove. Complimentary breakfast. (updated Jul 2018) 2 Lenox Hotel & Suites, 140 North St. (Metro Bus 7, 11, 20 or 25), ☏ +1 716-884-1700. Check-in: 2PM, check-out: 11AM. The oldest continually operating hotel in Buffalo, the Lenox Hotel and Suites began its existence as a luxurious hotel and apartment building that counted a young F. Scott Fitzgerald among its early residents. The Lenox's ground floor is occupied by the Nina Freudenheim Gallery and a restaurant, the Lenox Grill, and it also boasts lovely views of downtown Buffalo and the waterfront from its upper floors. (updated Aug 2018)

Splurge 3 Buffalo Marriott HarborCenter, 95 Main St. (Metro Rail: Erie Canal Harbor), ☏ +1 716-852-0049. Check-in: 3PM, check-out: noon. Buffalo Marriott HarborCenter's rooms each feature a flat-panel TV, a workstation, a mini-fridge, coffeemaker, iron and ironing board, and panoramic views over either Lake Erie or the downtown skyline. For shopping, dining, and nightlife, HarborCenter offers a sports bar, the fine dining restaurant Panorama on Seven, and a Tim Hortons coffee shop as well as a full fitness room, laundry, and dry-cleaning services. Parking is available in the HarborCenter ramp or the Marriott's private ramp. (updated Jul 2018) 4 Hyatt Regency Buffalo, 2 Fountain Plaza, ☏ +1 716-856-1234. 5 The Mansion on Delaware Avenue, 414 Delaware Ave. (Metro Bus 11, 20, 25 or 29; Metro Rail: Allen-Medical Campus), ☏ +1 716-886-3300. Check-in: 4PM

Go next

Suburbs and exurbs Unlike the faceless cookie-cutter residential tracts surrounding other American cities, many of Buffalo's suburbs have real character. More than that, suburbia's range of attractions, festivals and events, and other items of interest to visitors can hold its own with the urban core.

Tonawanda — a 19th-century lumber port turned middle-class residential community, Tonawanda is the western terminus of the modern-day Erie Canal. Amherst — Buffalo's most populous suburb contains the gargantuan UB North Campus, the charming village of Williamsville, and rural farmland in the far north. Cheektowaga — postwar suburbia at its most banal, but also shopping galore, including the area's largest mall. As the site of the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, Cheektowaga is likely on the itinerary of most visitors to Buffalo whether they actively seek it out or not. West Seneca — a proud German heritage dating to the town's foundation in the 1850s by the religious Ebenezer Society, and natural beauty that inspired watercolorist Charles Burchfield. Lackawanna — a rough-and-tumble company town that fell on hard times after the closure of the steel plant that gave the city its name, now the home of a vibrant Yemeni community and the magnificent Basilica of Our Lady of Victory. Grand Island — once a summer retreat for Buffalo's turn-of-the-century aristocracy, now the site of riverfront parkland and wide-open spaces a stone's throw from the bustle of the city. North Tonawanda — Tonawanda's sister city has a grittier and more working-class feel, but also a restored downtown with lively nightlife. Lancaster — an upper-middle-class second-ring suburb east of Cheektowaga in whose lovely town center stands the historic Lancaster Opera House. Orchard Park — the home of the Buffalo Bills has something for everyone, from bustling strip malls to a charming small-town downtown to the forests and hills of Chestnut Ridge Park. Hamburg — birthplace (allegedly) of the hamburger, Hamburg is also home of the Erie County Fair and boasts beautiful views over Lake Erie. East Aurora — the almost too-cutesy-for-its-own-good village that's home to the Roycroft Community of artists and artisans, an important exponent of the early 20th-century Arts and Crafts Movement. Clarence — tony exurb about a half-hour's drive from downtown Buffalo. Hit up the antique shops in Clarence Hollow if that's your thing, or tool around the exclusive Spaulding Lake neighborhood to gawk at the lifestyles of the Niagara Frontier's rich and famous. Lockport — Niagara County's seat makes the mos