Rise and Ruin: Making Hats for Hollywood on Buffalo’s East Side

BUFFALO, N.Y. — The hatmaker who has dressed James Garner and Leonardo DiCaprio runs a shop on Broadway Street, steps from the Family Dollar store. Few other businesses are open on this East Side drag, a commercial district that hummed with foot traffic in decades past. Several doors down, vintage, red-and-yellow lettering announces the Club Romway… Continue reading →

Exodus: A Quick-and-Dirty History of Buffalo’s Broadway-Fillmore Community

BUFFALO, N.Y. — I recently sat down to talk about Buffalo’s East Side with Henry Louis Taylor Jr., director of the University at Buffalo’s Center for Urban Studies and a man with an impressive collection of maps, books and Census records documenting the city’s history. I asked him, specifically, how Broadway-Fillmore, a once-bustling neighborhood deep… Continue reading →