Disappearing the shophouse and shopkeeper
Presentation on Saturday Nov. 12 to chart the intended and unintended consequences of Buffalo planning—all bad—on one neighborhood: Jefferson Avenue. Can a neighborhood and livelihoods be restored?
How did a classic Buffalo neighborhood of houses, family businesses, and busy sidewalks disappear? How did a strip with over 20 food stores become a food desert?
Some things were obvious: ripping expressways through tightly knit neighborhhoods, the scrapping clean of thousands of houses and hundreds of businesses in urban renewal projects. Others are insidious: The unquestioned and remorseless changing of the urban environment to accommodate people driving cars that erodes the sustainability and very existence of traditional neighborhoods and the people who inhabit, and would inhabit, them.
It is urban death by a thousand curb cuts, parking stalls, home demolitions, and perhaps most visibly, the disappearance of an essential building wherever civilizations have created hamlets and cities: the shophouse, a small building with a groundfloor shop and living quarters above. Lively places worldwide are defined by them. Buffalo used to be defined by them
Through vintage photos and maps, historian and preservationist Tim Tielman will chart the impact of 100 years of government planning policies that—to this day—favor new outlying developments and developers and hamper the revival of neighborhoods across the city. He’ll also suggest emergency and longterm solutions for Jefferson and neighborhhods across the city to rebuild from the literal rubble of the 100 Years’ War against Buffalo by Buffalo.
“Wrecking Jefferson: Urban Removal and its Consequences, 1950-1980,” is co-sponsored by the Fruit Belt-McCarley Gardens Housing Task Force and the Ground Zero ad hoc action group. It is free and open to the public at the Merriweather Library, Jefferson Avenue at East Utica street, Buffalo, at 1:30pm Saturday Nov 12. Information: 716-854-3749.