fixBuffalo

11/30/2006

Transfiguration Moment...

Still mesmerized by the beauty, decay and opportunity that Transfiguration Church is beginning to represent. More to follow.

photo courtesy of Sean Galbraith, Toronto.

Follow this link for additional information.

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Artspace Archive • Annals of Neglect • BAVPA • Where is Perrysburg? • Broken Promises...
Writing the City • Woodlawn Row Houses • Tour dé Neglect - 2006 • faq • my flickr
buffalo olmsted parks conservancy

While checking out the Buffalo River Wednesday afternoon, Ohio Street canoe launch, I spotted the Lansdowne again that's currently berthed at BIDCO. Forgot camera, sorry folks. The first pic, from September 2006 canoe trip, Part I and Part II - shows two rail cars, converted once to a restaurant in Detroit and later submerged in Erie, PA...used to look a bit different. Chip from Rochester, NY - regular fixBuffalo reader - sent in the other picture recently, how these rail cars looked, back in the day.

Chip also wrote...

The cars (there may have been 10 or 12 all told) were built by Pullman in 1947 for the Milwaukee Road's "Hiawatha" passenger trains, which ran west from Chicago to Minneapolis & Seattle. This was the Milwaukee Road's equivalent of the New York Central's 20th Century Limited; luxury accommodations. In the 1960's, as US rail passenger service was in decline, the Milwaukee Road sold a number of the cars to the Canadian National, which used them into the 1990's on overnight passenger trains operating between Montreal & Halifax.

Been down to the river a few times this year always different. McArthey's - nearby, great place for lunch or Friday nite fish fry. Live folk music Friday nights, too. And what trip to the "womb of Irish Buffalo" wouldn't be complete without visiting Mazurek's Bakery!

Saturday Morning - Tour Reminder...

Every Saturday...if weather's bad, just come on by the Sonic Café and we'll chat about the neighborhood. Newell and the BuffaloRising crew were great to include a post this week about a recent tour.

Backyard at Artspace
Tours in the Neighborhood
Saturdays at 11am

Regular 11am Saturday morning tour of the neighborhood - Backyard at Artspace. Meet-up in the Sonic Café area and plan on walking down Coe Place, around Ellicott, Northampton and Holland Place and Dodge if we have time. Plenty to see and learn about in an hour.

While talking about various developments and issues here on the City's near East side, we'll be stopping along the way to take pictures of the amazing amounts of architechtural detail. I'm always seeing something new. Make sure the batteries are charged in your digital camera, cup of coffee and we're off for an hour in what is soon to be Buffalo's coolest new neighborhood.

Saturday's at 11am...e-mail me or just show up. Here's the map!

11/28/2006

Back Wednesday...?

Blog free Tuesday continues...

Working on back patio - yes, Preservation Board approved - and a few other outdoor projects while the weather still holds.

If you haven't already downloaded Firefox 2.0, you really should. FixBuffalo and the rest of the web works best with it. Try it!
And if you still haven't clicked thru Olga'sTransfiguration Church pics, here you go. Favorite spot is this view from the choir loft. This shot of an intact Joseph Mazur mural should remind all of us of the importance of rescuing this art before it's gone and forgotten. I mean, who is going to save Jesus?
Blog free Wednesday, too probably...for Buffalo River canoe trip. Here's the posts from a few recent paddles - May 2005 and September 2006.

11/27/2006

Drive By...Photos

Caught up with Newell as we ducked out of the public hearing at County Hall late Monday afternoon. I usually see this guy in the driver's seat shooting up the City with the BuffaloRising cam so we made some time and caught-up about the local 'sphere and some City stuff down at the Pearl Street Grill. While Newell has like totally perfected the art of driveby photography - I've got to come clean and with my own as I'm not always grabbing pics with my feet on the ground either.

The urbanistically unique and design challenged Merriweather Library from the driver's seat.

And some of my favorite street art, down on Dodge Street, too. Side view mirror in the way as proof.

All time favorite is my blog free Tuesday photo - sandpilechild... Be on the look-out, you'll never know just when and where Newell will be...he's everywhere!

Double Opportunity...

I've been watching this one for awhile and just got the ML listing for 61 Glenwood Avenue from Ryan Pierce over at Polis Realty. 61 Glenwood is just a few blocks away from Artspace and around the corner from Performing Arts High School [quikmap]. I grabbed these shots Sunday afternoon.

click image to enlarge

This 3/2 double appears to be in very good shape and recently received tons of love in the form of new vinyl windows, back porch and glass block windows all the way around in the basement. Looks like a newer roof, too.

click image to enlarge

This is a bank foreclosure and Ryan can be reached at 716.881.1200 x209. He knows the neighborhood really well. And the bank only asking 14K. For comps sake, just a few blocks away 38 Northampton was on the market less than 60 days. And look at what you'll see from the front porch! Cool.

City Sale...

Had a few people ask about the City's recent in-rem auction results last week. I was there last month for a short bit and saw some amazing action on one west side property and now live on a block here in Cold Springs where three more homes are owned by the City, too.

First wrote about the results of what we here in the City know as in-rem 40, the city's recent tax foreclosure aution, right here in Mapping Foreclosures earlier in the month. Great gis mapping tools available in that post.

If you want to check out a specific property, I've organized the auction's results in an on-line and searchable spreadsheet - City of Buffalo - in rem 40.

Transfiguration, again...

Thinking about Transfiguration this weekend and located the picture on the left Sunday evening. It appears to be from the mid 1940's - the height of Catholic Buffalo that I wrote about recently here - Dalai me this...

click image to enlarge

Chuck LaChiusa's Buffalo as an Architectural Museum has a link to Transfiguration Church, documenting photographically some of the amazing architechtural detail - here. He also links to a brief history of the church and parish development written by Joseph Napora. The Polish Geneological Society of NYS has another history of the church.

Urbaneyes and others have reminded me of lower level green style re-development for places such as Transfiguration. Here, Christ Church Greyfriar in London - once destroyed during the Blitz in 1940 - remains standing, in part as a City park and part private residence. The other bombed out church, still standing in Europe on one of my favorite streets, the Ku'damm, is Berlin's Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It was built during the same time as Transfiguration and destroyed in 1943. And considering Transfiguration's bombed out apocalyptic interior, we just might have two possible models, in lieu of complete demolition.

Christ Church Greyfriar

Local ecclesiastical artist Joseph Mazur (1897-1970) is responsible for the creation of the murals that are now literally falling off the church's walls. Sean Galbraith from Toronto captured the condition of these murals recently with this photograph. Mazur is also responsible for a more secular piece - the Chopin Monument which was on the grounds of the Buffalo Museum of Science until it was removed from the East Side and to its current home in Kleinhan's Circle on Richmond Avenue.

For additional back ground about issues raised here make sure to check out comments in my Journey to Avoid Housing Court - Part 3 from February 2006 and in David Steele's February 27, 2006 BuffaloRising post, A Peek at Heaven and Possibly Hell.

It's only going to get worse in the months ahead for buildings such as Transfiguration. It's going to be pushed further to the back burner as Bishop Kmiec prepares to close additional architectural treasures, mostly on the City's East Side.

Spent considerable time this weekend with two of Buffalo's finest video and film people on the inside...check back soon. Breathtaking...(possible soundtracks include Mahler's 2nd, this - sort of apropos, no? - or maybe even recently found, Rufus... ;)

Smart Decline

Was reminded Sunday afternoon of an article distributed a few weeks ago at the unveiling of Blueprint Buffalo by Michael Clarke and the folks at LISC - Buffalo.

In a recent issue of Governing Magazine writer Christopher Swope interviews elected officials and policy wonks about what's happening in Youngstown, OH. The result, a short article - Smart Decline - dealing with with various aspects of the planning/development conundrum confronting a shrinking city like Youngstown, OH.

If Youngstown has made peace with its smaller self, however, its policy makers are still grappling with the key question: What does it mean to manage shrinkage in an intelligent way? Volumes have been written about how to implement “smart growth.” But what about smart decline? read the rest

Two longer q&a's with the same article - one with Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams and the other with Hunter Morrisson, Director of Urban and Regional Studies at Youngstown State University. While the site - Governing.com - is full of useful planning and development material, the associated blog - 13th Floor - is worth a closer look.

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See also - Getting Smarter about Decline...includes links to Blue Print Buffalo. For those of interested in issues involving "brownfield reclamation" see Learning from Others. Make sure to check out LISC - Buffalo and National Vacant Properties Campaign for addtional information regarding issues and major public policy initiatives involving abandondment, vacancy and the management of decline.

11/24/2006

Inside, again...

I visited Transfiguration Church on Sycamore Street a few times this past week. While urbaneyes and I rang two of the three bells still high in the belfry and spent considerable time marvelling at the extraordinary beauty of what remains of the church's interior - others were shooting.

Jay Morrison of Toronto and Mat from the DK PhotoGroup were around. Jay's photo's - flickr slideshow - and Mat's - also, flickr slideshow - are really extraordinary and capture the unique beauty of one of Buffalo's most forgotten religious ruins at this moment in time. Olga was around, too. Check out her work - here, on livejournal.

Inside Transfiguration, finally...contains references and links to the sale of this church and recent Housing Court history. Sean Galbraith's work - another DK Photogroup member - is featured in that post. Amazing, bookmark the page and pass it around.

Still wondering how things like this happen. I mean the City's most progressive housing court advocate, Judge Nowak - probably in the history of Buffalo - has never seen the file on this building in his court room. Get this, in three years - index #869/97. And Common Council President David Franczyk, who lives just around the corner from Transfiguration Church - is silent and has spent more time trying to save Perrysburg - you just won't believe this - than he has in his own neighborhood. Oh, almost forgot, there's a Polish Bishop here in Buffalo, Bishop Kmiec, too. No Polish heartstrings to pull on this one. Strange, I know yet the storefront church directly across the street from Transfiguration is in significantly better condition.

Would love to listen to my favorite Mahler, Symphony #2 - Die Auferstehung, feet up in the choir loft here at Transfiguration sometime, soon. Way appropriate especially considering which poet Mahler embraces for inspiration on this one.

BAVPA Reconstruction - End Week 21

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November 23, 2006 - Day 151

The Art wing was framed in this week. In the banner sketch right here the new Art wing is on the far right. The BAVPA flicker photo archive provides a quick review of the past 150 days construction progress.

See BAVPA Reconstruction Archive for additional details and updates. BAVPA - flickr photo archive.

11/23/2006

Tour this Saturday...11am

Backyard at Artspace
Tours in the Neighborhood
Saturdays at 11am

Regular 11am Saturday morning tour of the neighborhood - Backyard at Artspace. Meet-up in the Sonic café area and plan on walking down Coe Place, around Ellicott, Northampton and Holland Place and Dodge if we have time. Plenty to see and learn about in an hour.

Saturday's at 11am...e-mail me or just show up. Here's the map!

11/22/2006

Back soon...

Taking a few days off. Couple day trips and some work around the house. Reading and preparing a longer piece about the work of Camilo Vergara, too.

11/20/2006

Learning from Others...

One of the most interesting and unexpected portions of last Thursday's gig - Getting Smarter about Decline... - was the introduction of vacant and former industrial sites to the conversation and equation about vacancy and urban decline. This afternoon Michael Clarke - LISC Buffalo - sent me a copy of Eric Hodderson's observations and commentary about European Union Urban Policy. He mentioned Hoddderson's work Thursday afternoon towards the end of the presentation. I've made a few small formatting changes and archived his June 2006 writing here:

European Union Urban Policy – Observations and Commentary

Here, Hodderson focuses his attention on the brownfield reclamation efforts in the heavily industrialized area of the Ruhrgebeit in Germany. This area is better known as Emscher Landschaft Park. A few additional links illustrate many of Hodderson's points.

The slide shows are very easy to navigate and will provide a good visual orientation to the project's scope.

Emscher Landscape Park - main site, English language version
Emscher Landscape Park Slide Shows - various slide shows, German language
Emscher Landschaftspark - master plan, German language only - .pdf file

Here's the google satellite image of the area that Hodderson visited. I've visited the area a few times and the Ruhrgebiet is probably the most densly industrialized landscape I've ever experienced. If any fixBuffalo readers have visited this part of Germany and have some Emscher pix to share, let me know...

11/19/2006

Getting Smarter...Websites

On Thursday I attended the afternoon session sponsored by LISC-Buffalo and The National Vacant Properties Campaign of the unveiling of Blueprint Buffalo. Wrote about it here - Getting Smarter about Decline...

I spent some time Sunday afternnoon cruising the bibliography of both parts of the report - Policy Brief and Action Plan - and realized that the .pdf version wasn't hyperlinked [full text - Blueprint Buffalo-Action Plan]. So rather then hunt and peck for them, thought I would include them here, as they appear in the bibliography.

Here's the (almost, rest in a few days - check back) complete list of websites mentioned - archived here.