WELCOME TO FORGOTTEN BUFFALO & TOURS

While the city is mostly flat, passengers arriving at the station receive the impression that the station is situated on a small eminence. The illusion was created by a circular plaza on Lindbergh Drive (Memorial Drive). With an approach 150 feet wide by 600 feet in front of the station and level with the main floor, some twenty feet about the circular plaza. This curved inclined driveway and plaza constitute a majestic approach unequalled by any other railroad station in America.

TOWER: An octagonal 15-story office tower dominates the East Side skyline. The station, its offices and adjacent complex would house over 1500 Central employees in 1929. It is 271 feet high. The peak of this tower was also powerfully lit and was visible up to 15 miles away. The office tower consolidated NYC and other railroad services that were scatted all over the city. 

ENTRANCE LOBBY: The building was built with passenger flow in mind to prevent cross currents of traffic and eliminating the need to retrace ones steps. Passengers would enter the terminal through the entrance under the tower. Entrance lobby marked the only area in the terminal where you could enter the office tower. Four elevators and stairs provided access. (one to the top of the tower, one to the 15th floor and two to the 6th floor only.) Commercial rental space housed business such as a Union News, drug store and haberdashery. Offices above house NYC Police and the Paymasters Office.

Architectural critics have called the concourse one of the greatest public spaces ever created in Buffalo. The huge Roman arched windows straddle Curtis Street framing nearly the whole end of the building. Concourse measures 225-feet long, 66 feet wide, 63 feet high. Balconies at each end provided dramatic views of the entire concourse. The space was designed to handle 3200 passengers an hour.

TRAIN CONCOURSE: A 450-foot long train concourse served 14 passenger tracks.  To the outbound passenger's right were seven stairways, each with a bulletin board indicting the departure time and destination of the train below. Arriving passengers would have used seven openings on the left. A unique feature was the use of ramps for arriving passengers to reach the concourse.

PLATFORMS: Fourteen passenger tracks were served by 7 concrete platforms. Rounded end canopies on the platforms would be repeated by the architects in Cincinnati's Terminal. These platforms were 9 inches high as to allow easy access to cars and for inspection by the Operating Department.

TICKET OFFICE & BAGGAGE CHECK: 18 ticket windows featured beautiful bronze grillwork in geometric patterns manned by 46 employees with phone connections to 22 Pullman reservationists. Each ticket seller had his own personal cabinet of tickets, which he could lock up and wheel out of the way when going off duty, simplifying accounting. From the ticket windows one had a short walk to the baggage checkroom with its clever spiral-chute connection to the track-level baggage room. Metal finials in fleur-de-lis patterns sat atop pilasters flanking the windows.

WAITING ROOM and LOUNGES: Adjacent to the main concourse is BCT's primary waiting room. It had walls and ceiling of Spanish stucco setting it apart from the other major spaces of the Terminal. It's high and arched ceiling flattened out at the upper portion, which was painted sky blue and rendered clouds and indirect lighting to create the impression of being open to the outdoors. It was decorated with plaster bas-relief medallions of New York State scenes including the Status of Liberty, West Point, Niagara Falls and a modern NYC Hudson style locomotive. Accessible form the waiting room was a women's room patterned after the most opulent theaters. Decorative panels done in an American Indian-like pattern of red, gold, green, black and gray were used throughout. Low modern furniture was used. Waiting room also featured a commercial rental space featuring a circulating library, news stand and novelty shop. 

CLOCK: A central information booth housed a four-sided clock reminiscent of the Golden Clock at New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The clock featured a glass globe that could be lit a radiant green to silently signal NYC Police in case of an incident. With the support of WBEN Radio, M & T Bank and hundreds of Buffalonians, the Central Terminal Restoration Corp returned the clock to its location in May 2005. 

TRAVELER AID SHOPS: A host of rental spaces provided departing and arriving passengers with almost every need. These shops included a liquor store, barber shop, ladies' hair dressing parlor, drug store, florist, fruit shop, post office, shoe repair, news stands, watchmaker, lockers and a bank of modern telephones.

THE BUFFALO: One of the more popular features of BCT was a large bronze colored bison statue which stood at the eastern end of the passenger concourse. The original buffalo was a taxidermed animal provided by the Museum of Science. It would become a favorite of departing WWII solders who would take tuffs of hair as good luck charms. During the war, plans were made to replace the bison with a bronze statue. Due to wartime material restrictions, plaster was used instead of metal and painted gold. As the railroad struggled to survive after the war, the sculpture was never cast in bronze. For over 30 years the buffalo stood guard over the concourse. During the period of great vandalism the statue was smashed. In the early 90s, the University of Buffalo located the original artist mold and commissioned a bronze version for the campus. It currently stands in front of Alumni Arena with a plaque discussing its significance to the region. 

ADDITIONAL INFO

LOCATION
Downtown Buffalo's geographic center near the eastern end Lake Erie made it difficult for the New York Central Railroad (NYC) to access the city with mainline passenger service. East/West trains required a time consuming process of leaving the main line and back into the station after going around one branch of a "Y." For years a number of important trains (20th Century Limited) did not stop in Buffalo for passengers. Inexpensive property was another consideration. The neighborhood, primarily made up of immigrants, was prime for purchase. The current location sits only 2 and two-tenths from the core business district. At the time, it was far from any heavy traffic congestion found downtown.

PROJECT COST
15 Million to design & construct entire project. Only 1/3 was spend on the terminal. Other items include 30 miles of new track, interlock towers, a power plant, postal and baggage facilities and signaling system.  The interlock system was the largest in the world with 928 levers.

WHO ARE WAGNER & FELLHEIMER?
The architects choose the Art Deco style for Buffalo's new temple to transportation. Stewart Wagner and Alfred Fellheimer, who would a few years later design Cincinnati's Art Deco masterpiece Union Terminal, created a city within itself. The Terminal was designed primarily by Alfred Fellheimer who had long experience with railroad structures. Prior to forming his practice with Steward Wagner Feliheimer was engaged with firms that designed stations and terminals in St. Paul, Schenectady, Utica, Detroit and Grand Central Terminal in New York City. 

WHAT RAILROADS USED BCT?
New York Central, Michigan Central, Grand Trunk, Toronto Hamilton & Buffalo (TH&B), Pennsylvania, Canadian National, later Penn Central and Amtrak. Other railroads serving Buffalo used Lackawanna Station located at foot of Main Street (Erie, Lackawanna, Nickel Plate, Baltimore & Ohio) or the Lehigh Valley Station on Washington Street)

WHAT IS ART DECO?                                                                                      The period termed "art deco" manifested itself roughly between the two world wars, or 1920 to 1939. The style basically was a "modernization" of many artistic styles and themes from the past. You can easily detect in many examples of Art Deco the influence of Far and Middle Eastern design, Greek and Roman themes, and even Egyptian and Mayan influence. Modern elements included echoing machine and automobile patterns and shapes such as stylized gears and wheels, or natural elements such as sunbursts and flowers. This period of design and style did not just affect architecture, but all of the fine and applied arts as well. Furniture, sculpture, clothing, jewelry and graphic design were all influenced by the Art Deco style.

Information complied by Martin Biniasz from various sources including:

New York Central's Stations and Terminals, Geoffrey Doughty, 1999
A Station Too Late, Too Far, Garnet Cousins, Trains, September 1985
Dedication to Dethronement, Trains, October 1985
Buffalo Central Terminal, NYC Central Publicity Department, 1929
Flyer, NYC Central Publicity Department, 1929

BCT TURNS 75 - JUNE 2004

The contents of this site © 2005 by Martin Biniasz. Some images and text used throughout the site are protected by individual copyright holders. No content may be copied or reused without written permission from Martin Biniasz. Please contact me at Rocketship7@aol.com with questions.

Preservation on the Wrong Side of the Tracks

by Robert Klara,  Architecture Magazine Sept 2005

SEPTEMBER 12, 2005 -- On an afternoon's walk through downtown Buffalo, New York, an architecturally minded visitor should prepare for an accelerated heart rate. For here is beautifully restored and fastidiously maintained evidence of what happened when the City Beautiful movement waltzed with industrial prosperity. The concentration of monumental structures by the likes of Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, and Carrère & Hastings—plus later twentieth-century works by Rapp & Rapp and Minoru Yamasaki—explain why historians hail the city as an architectural museum.

After decades of decline, Buffalo is proud of having found the wherewithal to preserve its built legacy, and rightfully so. Good thing, then, that one scuff on its record lies well outside downtown, where visitors are scarce: Buffalo Central Terminal, its windows replaced by plywood, casts its hulking shadow over the slums of the east side. The contrast between the terminal and its pampered brethren downtown is striking visually, of course, but philosophically, too, because it raises an unsettling question: Are worthy buildings preserved solely for their cultural and aesthetic merits, or because they're fortunate enough to be located in "safe" affluent areas?

Next Stop, Chicago

For the New York Central Railroad, Buffalo was the midway point for the posh limiteds sprinting between New York City and Chicago. In 1925, believing Buffalo would expand, the Central chose a parcel 2.5 miles outside downtown. Its station—a luminous chest of Gustavino tile, pressed-metal ornament, and four types of marble—became a talisman for Buffalo's economic might.

In a story oft told, passenger railroads began their slow roll into oblivion in the 1950s. Central Terminal saw its last train off in 1979. Subsequent owners pillaged the place. When an influential senator allotted $1.5 million in federal funds for the terminal in 1995, Mayor Anthony Masiello diverted the money to a building downtown. That seemed strange, because Central Terminal was quite the plum for any developer: 15 acres for parking, tower floors of 6,000 square feet each, all for the special, low price of $1. That's what the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation (CTRC) paid for the place eight years ago.

Thanks, but . . .

Why no takers for Central Terminal? It's not because the trains don't stop there anymore. Whistles haven't echoed across the concourses of the Union Stations in Louisville or St. Louis since the 1970s, either—yet both currently house opulent hotels and those cities' finest restaurants. Nor is it due to lack of effort by preservationists. The CTRC has spent its modest donations on patching the roof and sweeping up, and used $25,000 given by a local bank to repurchase the terminal's concourse clock, which turned up on eBay in 1999. Nor, apparently, is it due to a lack of change in the state coffers—which have coughed up $100 million for H.H. Richardson's Buffalo Psychiatric Center.

So what is it? In a word, location. East Buffalo is poor. Crime rates are high. Even though the terminal property has advantages undreamed of downtown (such as easy interstate access), it's a matter of how one views a half-filled glass. "It's not downtown, it's in the wrong part of town: We've heard all the flip answers," laments CTRC president Russell Pawlak. "There's this notion that you're going to die if you go there," says Tim Tielman, executive director of the Campaign for Greater Buffalo, another preservation group. "We have to keep plugging away," concludes the CTRC's treasurer Michael Miller. "Eventually the right person with the right connections will come along."

Really? Will Buffalo get a visionary who will take a chance? Because the persisting failure—of the city, of developers—to rescue the terminal isn't just a missed economic opportunity, it's an occlusion of the historic record. Much is lost when the architectural heritage that visitors are shown is limited to those buildings within a stone's throw of a Starbucks. But in East Buffalo, for now at least, a stone's throw only means another broken window.

The beloved Central Terminal clock is back home in Buffalo, repaired and restored and in its original spot in the old train station.

"Too often we talk about all we have lost. Now we can start beginning to talk about those things we're regaining," said Russell Pawlak of the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation. The clock was May 10th before school children, senior citizens, and other Buffalonians. They burst into applause when the 14-foot clock’s lights were turned on.

"I walked in today to celebrate the lighting of the clock, and tears just rolled down my eyes," said Ann Peck, "because of memories way back during the war years, World War II, when my husband used to come on furlough to visit us during the holidays." The clock was a fixture in the train station from 1929 until it closed in the 1970's. The clock was later sold in the 1990's, and was discovered in a Chicago antiques store. A public fund-raising effort organized by WBEN radio raised $14,000, and M & T Bank donated $25,000 so the clock could be purchased and repaired. The clock will be on display this summer in the Central Terminal. The clock will then be on display in different locations in Buffalo, starting with M & T Center on Main Street.

Central Terminal Clock Stirs Timeless Memories
By MARK SOMMER
Buffalo News Staff Reporter
5/11/2005

The flick of a light switch illuminated the long-lost art deco clock on Tuesday, officially returning the gold metallic timepiece to the Central Terminal.

For many present, including Ann Peck of Buffalo, gazing upon the 14-foot-tall, four-sided clock once more turned back the hands of time.  The East Side resident recalled it was by the concourse fixture that she looked for her future husband, Ambrose, when he returned home on furlough during World War II.

"I used to come here and wait for him. The whistle of that train, as it neared this beautiful architectural building. . . . Here we were, standing by this clock, and tears would start pouring out of my eyes," Peck said. Politicians, railroad enthusiasts and schoolchildren, along with several veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War who remembered departing from the station, were on hand to celebrate the clock's return. It was sold in the 1990s after the shuttered station fell into private hands.

Speakers at the unveiling forecast the clock's return as a harbinger of things to come for the landmark, which opened in 1929 and operated as a railroad station for 50 years. Since 1997, the volunteer Central Terminal Restoration Corp. has owned the building, which is on the national and state registers of historic places. The group has pursued the dream of restoring the building while preparing it for occupancy, having secured funds to stabilize and seal the building, remove 300 tons of debris and relight the building's exterior.

Council President David A. Franczyk, a longtime supporter of the Central Terminal, predicted a bright future for the building. It was Franczyk who discovered the clock on eBay about five years ago. Then, in the fall of 2004, a fund-raising effort spearheaded by WBEN radio returned it to Buffalo. The M&T Bank Foundation paid the full $25,000 purchase price to a Chicago architectural salvage store, and an additional $14,000 was raised by radio listeners to repair, maintain and display the clock. Franczyk said he has been told some items from the Central Terminal may have wound up in Hong Kong. He also heard items turned up in a Woody Allen movie. "I keep looking at eBay. Maybe I'm going to find more of this stuff," Franczyk said.

Dan Harter, of Amherst, remembers leaving Buffalo on a sleeper train as a serviceman during the Korean War. He said he hopes someone with deep pockets will help the building forge a new future.