Buffalo Place + Canalside at Night

Buffalo Place at night, a very lonely place with some great office architecture.  Buffalo is old enough that there are plenty of quality office buildings constructed before the generic post-war design aesthetic crept into commercial design.  Especially nice to have an office building designed by the architect of the World Trade Center.

Canalside at night is a beautiful location, especially at night.  It would be nice if a city like Chicago could have something like this.  Brooklyn Navy Yard could take some cues from this.

Buffalo, above and below

A drive along the Buffalo Skyway followed by a subway ride and a visit to Buffalo Central Terminal.  The abandoned central railway station’s fate is very much represented by the new skyway, a symbol of the car’s dominance over railroad transit in the latter half of the 20th Century.  Buffalo at least has a relatively modern and efficient subway system, one of the fastest in the country and much faster than most other light rail systems.

Buffalo Lakefront and West Side

The lakefront of Buffalo is dominated by the New York Thruway, a quite insurmountable barrier with few points of crossing.  Hopefully, the view from the Maple Leaf train that uses the lakefront and riverside track is pleasant.  Also visited during this week was Delaware Avenue and Kleinhans Hall, a symbol of enlightenment and culture.  Buffalo is definitely a city of contrasts.

Arrival in Buffalo

Upon arriving in Buffalo, it was pleasant to see a largely functioning downtown with decent amenities.  Buffalo has a lot of large and tall buildings for a city of its size, the legacy of a much larger metropolis.  There was definitely a need to use portrait orientation, which is a good thing.  Low-rise, low-density cities are a thing of the past.