Buffalo's Erie Canal Harbor was home to a lot of history during the 19th Century with the construction of the Erie Canal. It has now been given some new life thanks to the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation and their mission to make this section of downtown Buffalo a center of culture, commerce, and life. This photo was taken on a Saturday afternoon in late May 2011. It was depressingly vacant there but the reconstructed Commercial Slip and architectural ruins to its right provided for an excellent shot from the Whipple Truss bridge. The Skyway and the vacant Donovan State Office Building in the background stand as an outdated relic of Buffalo's dark side of the mid-20th Century and provide a stark contrast to the rest of the harbor's renewal and development.
I have taken quite a bit of interest in these sorts of things. I wrote my honors thesis on urban renewal in Buffalo and interned with a NYS agency. Buffalo has the potential to be a really cool place but there is a lot of work that needs to be done. The work that the ECHDC has been doing at the harbor is a great start which will hopefully be added in the next few years and be the inspiration and catalyst for a broader movement within the City of Buffalo. Urban Planning; it is as important as it is interesting.
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