BUFFALO, N.Y. — The pigeon shit is everywhere. It’s in the belly of the church, beneath the cracked cathedral ceiling, carpeting the floor of the nave where wooden pews once stood. It’s in the choir loft. On a narrow flight of steps ascending skyward to the bell tower, the droppings have accumulated in a lining […]
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St. Matthew’s History: Q & A With the Buffalo Diocese
BUFFALO, N.Y. — St. Matthew’s Roman Catholic Church, founded in 1908, is one of 14 churches the eight-county Catholic Diocese of Buffalo closed in the 1990s. Like business, factories and other landmarks across the city, the house of worship fell victim to the region’s declining population.
Continue readingInvisible Cities: Like Every City, Buffalo Is Many Cities
BUFFALO, N.Y. — To the man who walks head down, eyes to the ground, the city is a mess of sewer caps and gutters. The world he observes is one of concrete, of pavement cracked by time and weather. To the man who looks up at the sky, gaze titled toward the heavens, the city… Continue reading
True Bethel Baptist Church: The Neighborhood Is Bleak. The Church Is Not
BUFFALO, N.Y. — The billboard at the northwest corner of Fillmore Avenue and East Ferry Street was the kind of urban gem that inspired drivers to brake for a better look or backtrack to snap a picture. A mammoth photograph of a man in a leopard-print toga filled out the center of the sign. Eyebrows… Continue reading
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