Urban Blight

I decided to use  Niagara street from Ferry street to the I-90 entrance ramp. 

If you walk a few feet down to the foot of Ferry on Niagara you can cross a pedestrian bridge to park along the Niagara River. Its very clear that Niagara street is named for the Niagara River which runs parallel to it. 

As you first cross the bridge it appears that the bridge simply goes over the river and connects you to a small island park off the shoreline.  If you look closer you'll notice thats its actually a draw bridge, and if you look over each side of the bridge it crosses a canal. The canal is now used for recreational boats mostly.  You can see old anchors along the canal, as it must have originally been used for ships to navigate into the city. 

The proximity to the canal shaped the development of Niagara st. as a commercial center. Located right along the  draw bridge on Niagara and Ferry street is Rich Products factory complex. Rich's stands out as the only modern commercial factory on this strip. It is still in operation.

As you walk down Niagara st. north from Rich's, the streets are lined with commercial buildings. Some commercial  businesses are still in existence. You can a few see newer looking business signs, and the buildings look like they've been renovated a bit, but the original buildings (for the most part) are still in place.   Most buildings are vacant and now in complete disrepair. 

Apart from Rich's, all the commercial buildings seem to have all been built in the same time period because they share the same industrial architectural style. The simple brick multi-floor style is common to all the buildings along Niagara. The buildings favor simple structure over aesthetic beauty.   

There are also occasional apartment buildings that are now abandoned and neglected.  These multi-story tenements    are packed in along the streets. The apartments were also built in the same utilitarian multi-story brick style, which is common to all these buildings.  This area is where people lived and worked. 

By looking at the buildings you can tell they were not built to be elaborate or expensive structures but simply built to serve a purpose. This early factory and tenant brick design looks like they were built in the late 19th century or early 20th century. 

You can see Niagara street was once an economically viable commercial area. With its location along the canal and it's heavy industrialization, in its hey-day you can imagine its was a noisy, very active street filled with people walking along the side walks. Today Niagara street is part of  the city's urban blight.  This street is one of the few places where buildings have not been demolished in urban renewal projects. Here we can see a glimpse of the commercial landscape that embodied buffalo as an industrial city.