June 28, 2006 Update
Interested in Coe Place? See the section of Chris's report - Welcome to Coe Place!
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Midtown: Poised for Renaissance
Chris Hawley
INTRODUCTION
Project Concept
The purpose of creating this written plan for the Midtown neighborhood is not conventional, in that it is not a traditional planning report whose intent is to determine whether to proceed with a public venture. The plan for Midtown has been prepared with the understanding that the City's investment in an innovative artist loft project will be have a positive impact that can be leveraged with complementary improvements in the surrounding neighborhood. The plan, in other words, gets straight to the point. It defines opportunities, proposes solutions, and outlines definitive, pragmatic recommendations for bringing renewed life and vitality to Buffalo's Midtown district.
Artspace -- Context for Redevelopment
Artspace, a non-profit organization based in Minneapolis, MN, is pursuing the development of a new artist loft project in a historic, five-story former automobile factory at 1219 Main Street, in what has been historically known as the Sarabeth Building. Completed in 1911, the Sarabeth Building was constructed to house the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company, a pioneer of America's nascent automobile industry in the early 20th century.
The project will consist of 55 live/work units in the Sarabeth Building and a series of new builds to be constructed in the space behind the building. There will be 30 live/work units in Sarabeth and 25 in the new structure, ranging in size from 800-square-foot efficiencies to 1,700 square foot three-bedroom units. In addition, at least 13,000 square feet of commercial and retail space on the street level of the Sarabeth Building will provide space for arts organizations and arts-friendly retail businesses. A new public space will be created between the two buildings to provide a staging ground for performances, outdoor arts displays, and community gardening.
Artspace is bringing to Buffalo an exciting project, a key initial investment in a much broader revitalization effort planned for Midtown.
Midtown -- Poised for Renaissance
The investment being made by Artspace is being affirmed by the City's commitment to undertake a comprehensive revitalization strategy for Midtown, anchoring the promised influx of new residents with plans for a revived urban fabric, new parks and public spaces, and neighborhood restoration and reconstruction initiatives. These investments aim to make Midtown Buffalo a case study in enlightened city planning.
Midtown is highly advantaged by its location. It is poised to seize opportunities made possible by its proximity to two transit hubs, the resurgent Fruit Belt neighborhood, the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus, the arts-friendly Allentown and Elmwood Village communities, and the new loft districts emerging along Main Street to the south. The decision by Artspace to locate their new artist residence in Midtown was thus made with remarkable foresight. The influx of new residents from the arts and creative industries will coincide with, as well as be a catalyst for, the natural north- and eastward flow of redevelopment progressing from areas nearby. Midtown is effectively the "next frontier" for neighborhood revival in Buffalo.
For planning purposes, this document has defined the boundaries of Midtown to include the areas bordered by North Street to the south, East Utica Street to the north, Masten Street to the east, and Main Street to the west. It is considered to be in the very southern stretches of the old hamlet of Cold Springs, an early 19th century settlement centered around a natural spring near Ferry and Main streets, later incorporated into the City of Buffalo. This document will focus new improvements within a more focused area adjacent to the Artspace project, bounded by the more widely recognized core areas of Midtown between Main, Michigan, Best and East Utica streets.
Since historic architecture and unique streetscapes can provide a template for neighborhood "rediscovery," Midtown is ideally positioned for future investment. Its historic residential and commercial building stock, composed of a rich panoply of late nineteenth and early twentieth century styles, is comparable to the best neighborhoods of Buffalo. This unique architectural milieu strengthens the neighborhood's ability to create retail-supporting densities, provide a walkable and uniquely urban atmosphere, invite new investment, and improve the quality of life for neighborhood residents.
A neighborhood once distinguished by its jazz clubs, automobile manufacturers and showrooms, and comfortable urban streetscapes, Midtown exuded a concrete identity and sense of place that could be resurrected and reinvigorated by today's renewal efforts.
PLANNING OBJECTIVES
The City has devised some planning objectives for Midtown that aim to enhance the historic character of the neighborhood and establish a framework for its future development. Following an "organic" model of revitalization, the City will focus on "planting" targeted public improvements in key corridors and nodal points, providing the seeds for a community-initiated, grassroots renewal process. Since it is outside the bounds of the City to do "everything," the objective will be to focus on modest but meaningful improvements that "fertilize" a revitalization effort already underway. This strategy aims to leverage public investment to complement, not overwhelm, the efforts of citizens and private investors in Midtown.
The plan has defined broad goals for the neighborhood to be pursued by public and private partners:
1. reinforce tightly-knit, urban streetscapes
2. provide gap financing for new home construction and rehabilitation
3. create new small business opportunities along walkable retail corridors
4. preserve and reuse resources important to the history and character of the neighborhood
5. enhance neighborhood densities through quality infill development
6. identify neighborhood regreening strategies and public space opportunities
7. add new and distinctive streetscape amenities
8. provide a staging ground for arts-related neighborhood improvements
9. encourage bicycle and transit use
10. solidify the unique image and sense of place inherent to the Midtown district
This plan outlines, on a block by block basis, a catalog of public improvements and redevelopment opportunities. In this sense, it is not a "vision" document, merely outlining vague goals and ideals. The plan outlines specific actions the City could implement with the assistance and guidance of community stakeholders. The Midtown plan is thus a micro-planning document, even as it is designed to avoid the over-planning so frequent in many city planning initiatives. Following an organic model for redevelopment will allow the City to apply scarce resources toward yielding achievable outcomes, avoiding the pitfalls associated with massive, cataclysmic renewal projects so common in the past.
In the following pages, redevelopment tactics will be described in often botanist terms, reinforcing the idea that the City is simply adding crucial nutrients required to grow a functional, livable urban neighborhood. Midtown, like a neglected garden, is a mix of underused resources and vacant land that establish a scenario for new growth opportunities. The City will guide, assist, and fertilize efforts to nurture Midtown's blossoming into a great neighborhood again.
1 Reinforce tightly-knit, urban streetscapes
This plan attempts to reinforce Midtown's prevailing urban design to stem a creeping suburbanization of the neighborhood, encourage walkability over automobility, enhance densities useful to establishing neighborhood retail, and promote development that complements the unique character and image of the neighborhood. The past fifteen years has brought housing development to Midtown that, while often very beautiful and frequently matching some design aspects of the older housing stock, still fails to match the densities, prevailing setbacks, use of materials, and details of character that would otherwise enhance and solidify the imageability of a very unique place. This plan assumes a belief that urban neighborhoods like Midtown should remain vitally, unmistakably urban.
To protect and bolster the historic urban-ness of Midtown, this plan has cataloged the concrete, historically consistent features of every block to assemble a design ethic that will inform revitalization efforts in which the City takes part. The plan also highlights key structures and streetscapes whose importance to the fabric of the neighborhood is paramount. In some instances, this ethic will take on greater legal authority with the recommendation of historic designation status for streets like Coe Place. In most instances, however, the City will apply a "soft" or guiding hand for developing in urban ways distinct to the area. In other words, the City will assist only the efforts that enhance existing streetscapes, not degrade or negate them.
Every block in Midtown engenders subtle variations in urban design, the specific caveats of which will be detailed in pages to follow. The prevailing urban design of the neighborhood, however, encompasses broad themes that will be consistent throughout, depending on the building type and use. Remarkably, a few simple rules would allow a great deal of variety and innovation to emerge in any new development, entirely consistent with and complementary to the existing building stock. This plan wants to encourage architectural variety as part of its effort to create a neighborhood embracing imaginative, even whimsical, ways of thinking. These "rules" would allow new development to be creative and contemporary, not merely a mirror image of older building stock, while nurturing compact streetscapes that enhance the historic composition of the neighborhood.
Design guidelines to be supported by the City would be shaped by the prevailing features of four building types commonplace to the area:
Mixed-use commercial buildings
These structures exist primarily along and near Main Street, but also exist along select corners of residential streets, such as the intersection of Riley and Holland. They always directly abut the street. They always contain at least two stories. They are built of durable, permanent materials, such as stone and brick. They tend to have ample fenestration, especially at street level, as well as tall ceilings often exceeding 12 feet in height. They often contain character brickwork and subtle details that give the buildings character and distinction. With a focus on walkability, not automobility, they also rarely contain off-street parking.
Multifamily residential apartments
Multifamily dwellings are not the most common form of residential development in Midtown, but in a certain areas, like East Utica and Laurel streets, they are prominent contributing features of the streetscape. They are usually two-story structures (sometimes more) built of durable materials, such as brick and stone, and often contain usable porches on each elevation. Facades are usually broken up by features like bay windows. Setbacks vary, but are often shallower than those of single- and double-family detached dwellings. Lot widths for these structures rarely exceed sixty feet. Parking is typically absorbed by on-street spaces rather than dedicated driveways or surface lots.
Residential rowhouses
Rowhouse architecture in the area, particularly north of Midtown in the neighborhood of Cold Springs, tends to repeat a single distinctive design over several contiguous units. Each unit contains its own usable porch and stoop. Unit widths never exceed twenty-five feet. Setbacks are usually very shallow, typically about six feet. Substantial variety exists in design, detail and form.
Single and double family detached homes
Single and double-family detached houses are the most common building type in Midtown, and are the most pertinent to future development efforts in the neighborhood. The most important and definable features of the structures are the following:
* prevailing setbacks, which rarely exceed 10 feet and are sometimes much shallower
* building height, which is never less than two stories and never more than three
* lot width, which typically varies from 29 to 35 feet
* usable porches, often on both elevations, typically extending over the width of the house but almost always containing a depth of at least 6 feet and a width of at least 12 feet
* where garages exist at all, they are set back from the street at least 30 feet
* use of traditional materials, such as wood and brick
* often on corner lots, first-story converted storefronts with ample fenestration, clear points of access, and minimum or zero setbacks
2 Provide gap financing for new home construction and rehabilitation
"People are poor not because of architecture. They're poor because they don't have any money." -- Neil Brenner, urban sociologist
The City already provides funding for the rehabilitation of vacant and/or deteriorated City-owned, HUD-owned or privately owned residential homes through the Fifty-Fifty (50/50) Program. This plan advocates for a strategic, targeted application of this program over the Midtown district to maximize its impact and enable grassroots restoration.
Under the 50/50 Program, the City provides up to one-half of rehabilitation costs as a conditional grant, up to a total of $25,000, provided that the homeowner or purchaser documents the availability of matching funds (or greater, depending on the cost of the rehab) and agrees to reside in the property for the defined term of a loan. Funds must be used to bring the home into compliance with local codes and to reduce lead based paint hazards. The program is available to homeowners and first-time homebuyers with household incomes of less than 80% of the area's median (adjusted for household size) who are able to obtain conventional funding for the purchase of property and/or their share of the rehab cost.
In the special case of Midtown, the 50/50 Program will be modified so artists who cannot gain residence in Artpsace and teachers from the Buffalo Arts Academy will not have to meet any income requirements for application. As part of the City's effort to lure arts-oriented and creative personalities to Midtown, these income ceilings will be eliminated to encourage people with careers in the arts to settle in the area. The City will also set aside several character structures it owns in Midtown and Cold Springs, like the Emerson Rowhouses, specifically for artists.
The structures to be improved with 50/50 assistance must be residential or mixed-use buildings with no more than four dwelling units. All properties assisted must include the owner-occupied unit. Recipients of program assistance must correct code deficiencies and ensure that the assisted units and common areas meet federal housing quality design standards. In addition to these base requirements, this plan advocates that rehabilitation projects on Midtown buildings older than 50 years also follow federal guidelines for the National Register of Historic Places to quality for the 50/50 Program. This would assure that rehabilitation projects are sensitive to the historic character of the neighborhood, utilizing traditional materials, preserving intricate details of craftsmanship, and affirming the integrity of the building's original design.
3 Create new small business opportunities along walkable retail corridors
"Living cities, therefore, ones in which people can interact with one another, are always stimulating because
they are rich in experiences, in contrast to lifeless cities, which can scarcely avoid being poor in experiences and thus dull,
no matter how many colors and variations of shape in buildings are introduced."
-- Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space
This plan advocates for the City's active participation in planting new locally-owned retail venues along key nodes of the Midtown district, particularly along Main Street and on strategic corners of residential streets to its east. It is assumed retail development in Midtown will be, as well as should be, shaped by people walking and biking from homes and workplaces nearby. Thus, this plan attempts to fertilize a design ethic that encourages walkability over automobility, such that stores tend to be small, are built up to the street, contain a mix of uses, and rely on on-street rather than dedicated parking.
The vision for Midtown encompasses not merely the establishment of local businesses per se, but their contribution to an atmosphere encouraging daily social interaction between people. Street corners provide an irreplaceable function in urban neighborhoods. They are the rivets that tie a community together, socially and physically; they either contain uses that activate community life or they contribute to an environment of insularity and provincialism. Corner stores, filling a crucial gap in community life, provide opportunities for casual contact and association between neighbors who might not ever see or know each other under other circumstances. In neighborhoods like Midtown whose retail base has been decimated by overwhelming competition from suburban malls and strip plazas, the need for the corner store takes on increasing urgency. Neighborhoods become only mere "areas," abstractions on a map, without the prevalence of neighbors seeing and interacting with one another outside the private spheres of work and home.
Community is almost nonexistent without it.
To foster walkable neighborhood retail now largely absent in Midtown, this plan proposes the City purchase and renovate a small number of historically-important, underused commercial buildings to provide venues for new small businesses. Following a model that was successful for the City's Market Arcade initiative in the Theatre District, the City would acquire two or three undervalued mixed-use buildings, bid out renovation, and rent to neighborhood retailers that create "Third Places" important to the fostering of community. So-called "Third Places," identified by sociologist Ray Oldenburg as neighborhood meeting places outside the home and office, include hair parlors, taverns, book stores, news and magazine shops, restaurants, diners, gyms, corner stores, flower shops, and cafes. They are places where nearby residents feel invited, on a regular basis, to come and meet other neighbors in a casual setting, learn about daily news and gossip, and form a climate of congeniality without which a cohesive, tightly-knit neighborhood is difficult to achieve.
The neighborhood contains many underused, retail-supportive structures, some detailed in pages to follow, whose survival and reuse is absolutely critical to the future of the area. To save these structures would do more than infuse the neighborhood with new social and economic life; it would give residents and investors a reason to believe in Midtown's future.
4 Preserve and reuse resources important to the history and character of the neighborhood
Midtown is historically and architecturally a very rich place. Key neighborhood landmarks, like the Sarabeth Building and St. Vincent's Convent, are now capturing the attention of investors and architecture enthusiasts. Streets like Coe Place, Ellicott Street, and Northampton Street are recognized urbanscapes worth preserving, not destroying or degrading. Midtown, in other words, already contains an existing landscape with something to offer the people of Buffalo, bestowing upon it a sense of possibility not every neighborhood enjoys.
This plan is founded on a belief that the neighborhood's historic resources will be crucial ingredients in making the Artspace project successful for the rest of the neighborhood. This Artspace investment is certain to provide new eyes and ears for other potential redevelopment and homeownership opportunities in Midtown, so it's essential to ensure a climate of preservation and good stewardship so character buildings are still extant as investment inevitably comes.
Not all of Midtown's historic building stock is secure. On some streets, like Dodge, there are examples of character structures whose immediate future is very much undecided. In some cases, demolition could theoretically come any day, a process that must be arrested for even some of the worst properties. In other cases, including areas of Michigan Avenue, entire streetscapes of 100+ year old homes of mixed upkeep could be undermined if the demolition of even one deteriorated property is permitted. This plan advocates for aggressive and immediate action on important, at-risk structures throughout Midtown.
Precedents from other metropolitan areas document the transformative effect a City can have by taking decisive action ensuring the restoration of one or two of a block's worst buildings. The impact of this approach has been to demonstrate the potential of properties in even poor condition, bucking the "necessity" of demolition, and in many cases elevating the entire perception of a block's future. The psychological effect on a neighborhood can be enormous. The less radical and more-frequently pursued strategy of only investing in properties of already moderately good upkeep has been less transformative, the visual impact less hope-inducing.
This plan thus advocates for demolition under only the most extreme circumstances, circumstances where the life and safety of nearby residents is clearly at risk. There are very few such circumstances in Midtown. Mostly, properties in poor condition still exhibit amazing qualities of craftsmanship and design that make their renovation a worthwhile goal. In pages that follow, each block will be detailed, with every building's character and condition noted. It is hoped public and private partners will heed the recommendations listed in this plan for each property in matters concerning their potential demolition, renovation, sale or purchase. Ultimately, the goal of this plan is to preserve and reuse wherever possible.
Not all properties in Midtown, undoubtedly, are works of transcendent importance to the history of the city, and very few are designed by noted architects. Increasingly, this is not what is important with regard to preservation. Midtown is a place full of character, a place of history-besotted structures of modest means, often contractor houses, workman's cottages or ordinary mason's brick commercial structures. These are the everyday masterpieces whose importance to the image and unique feel of the neighborhood are as vital as its more identifiable works of architecture, like the recently renovated Squier House. This plan takes into account the value of both the so-called ordinary in addition to the transcendent, assuring that good buildings are not simply reduced to isolated museum pieces surrounded by blight and decay, but are embedded in living, functioning neighborhoods.
Every effort will be made to return Midtown's historic streetscapes to a place of value in Buffalo's urban scene, from the modest Queen-Anne homes of Coe Place to the immaculate houses of Northampton Street. In some instances, this plan will recommend subtle interpretative components (like landmark signage), streetscape enhancements (like brick streets), and protective legal measures (like district designation) to enhance preservation and reuse endeavors. Good stewardship will be encouraged and rewarded, the City adding crucial nutrients to move the process forward.
5 Enhance neighborhood densities through quality infill development
"You know the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules." -- Anonymous
The City of Buffalo owns over 3,500 properties. In the relatively smaller Midtown alone, the City owns dozens of vacant lots that create damaging gaps in the streetwall, establish a climate of blight and disinvestment, and impose enormous burdens of upkeep on an overstretched and underfunded City bureaucracy. Inevitably, vacant City-owned properties receive sparse maintenance when, in fact, private owners have always been the best stewards of urban property.
The sheer breadth of City-owned vacant lots in Midtown exposes it to the danger of a quick-fix mentality, with solutions seen as near-term rather than long. This plan assumes a total redevelopment solution for Midtown's vacant resources will be found only with time and patience, a range counted in many years, not few. There are methods of expediting the development of vacant land that can actually harm the long-term prospects of the neighborhood, represented namely in the two strategies most widely accepted by some public partners: 1) the combination of several 30-foot-wide lots for the development of suburban-style homes with spacious lawns, and 2) the sale of vacant properties to adjacent homeowners for the establishment of excessive side yards. Only in limited cases have these strategies represented appropriate, effective decisions in those few neighborhoods where increasing, or even maintaining, residential densities is untenable. It is a questionable notion indeed that decreasing density and increasing abandonment of Midtown is inevitable, and that city policy is powerless to prevent it or even reverse it.
Undoubtedly, Buffalo and especially Midtown has witnessed substantial thinning of population over the past few decades, but this plan views a suburbanization policy for Midtown to be short-sighted, a course that only fuels the decline of a neighborhood with remarkable potential for revival and re-urbanization.
The resurrection of neighborhood retail, walkable streets, vital public spaces, and a supportive tax base all depend on density. Value is created by people, in large numbers, who are able to walk to stores, take transit, enjoy nearby parks, and share the costs for needed infrastructure like sidewalks and sewers. While it may seem obvious that urban neighborhoods don't work without lots of people in them, the City has actually been advancing a policy that discourages dense settlement patterns in favor of what is perceived to be the suburban good life. Over the past fifteen years, the City has focused its vacant land policies on the creation of new housing that follows a suburban development pattern, undermining densities that are essential to other worthwhile goals.
On streets like Michigan Avenue, attractive new housing has been constructed on very wide lots, in some instances only three or four houses to an entire block. The economic and social benefit of this sprawling arrangement is minimal, providing a passing aesthetic boost but adding nothing to the general public's enjoyment of the neighborhood as a whole. Devoting such vast land areas to such unintensive uses only reinforces conditions that make it difficult to uplift the area's prospects.
Under the city's Urban Homestead Program, property owned by the City can be purchased for One Dollar ($1.00). Vacant parcels acquired through tax foreclosure can be homesteaded after the applicant provides certified building plans and proof of financing for home construction to the city's Division of Real Estate. This plan calls for very aggressive, but measured, disposition of underkempt vacant properties to private owners who intend to build on them.
The advantage of sprawl is that it consumes much more land, much more quickly. For some this would mean developing neighborhoods more quickly, but nothing could be further from the case. Nearly entire blocks of Midtown have been rebuilt in fell swoops, to no noticeable benefit. It should be no surprise this plan calls for the sale of vacant land expressly for the creation of compact, urban building types that make a fundamentally urban place more viable. The City is in an advantageous position to use its collection of vacant land to rebuild neighborhoods in its own, urban image. (The vacant land is the "gold" and the City makes the rules.) The Main Street corridor, supported by a half-billion dollar light rail investment, is a logical area in which to shift and reconcentrate the city's ebbing population. In areas like Midtown, a reconcentration and urbanization policy would provide the greatest returns on regional investments in transit, infrastructure and neighborhood retail amenities. This plan calls for utilizing City-owned vacant land to advance that purpose.
6 Identify neighborhood regreening strategies and public space opportunities
"Conventionally, neighborhood parks or parklike open spaces are considered boons conferred on the deprived populations of cities.
Let us turn this thought around, and consider city parks deprived places that need the boon of life and appreciation conferred on them."
-- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
This plan hopes to create and enhance public spaces in ways that intice people outdoors to enjoy the neighborhood and to enliven it. Doing so seems like a simple concept, but achieving it in any substantive way is a major design challenge. It's a challenge to provide spaces that attract large numbers of people of different backgrounds, to induce people out of automobiles in favor of leisurely strolls, or even to bring people out on their porches on a regular basis. Every impulse in modern society resists neighborhood interactive activities, like walking to the store, as inadequate, even passe. Imaginative, time-tested design has the potential to go against the grind, however, providing incentives for enjoying outdoor environments firsthand rather than through the television set or car window. Detailed in pages to follow, potential new spaces would be planted in ways that provide venues for casual relaxation, public performances, art displays, traffic calming, children's play, and pedestrian passage.
The number of vacant parcels in Midtown is too vast, and residential densities too thin, to populate numerous open spaces at once. The plan for Midtown calls for focusing resources, not only money but resident users, on a small number of very high quality spaces framed by areas of new infill development. In some instances, empty lots can simply become formalized pedestrian paths, over existing desire paths, or decorative spaces ideally maintained by private homeowners. Truly public spaces, however, meant to attract an actual using public, can only be carefully placed and planned. This plan supports a Small is Beautiful policy of limiting the number of off-street public spaces, each serving a varied purpose and target audience.
The street itself, as a conduit for pedestrian traffic, is Midtown's most overlooked public space -- a "garden" in need of tending. Sidewalks are always the most intensively used pedestrian spaces in a city, and it is rare for people, or even planners, to think of them as filling a park-like function. They are often the destination of choice for children's play, they are the view enjoyed from a porch, they are the avenue through which people get from place to place. Almost any judgment about the quality and livability of a neighborhood is made from the vantagepoint of the sidewalk. As part of this plan, sidewalks will be the staging ground for the most meaningful improvements that can be made in Midtown, from accommodation for play space to new landscape amenities.
A key aspect of the Artspace project will be to ensure the general public's enjoyment of its presence in the neighborhood. This means creating opportunities not only for the provision of public gathering areas on site, but for new pedestrian access to the site from Midtown east of Main Street. This plan wants to emphasize the importance of creating a direct positive impact on the East Side, where it is needed the most, and de-emphasizing more obvious spillover to Elmwood Village on the west. The plan advocates for two "front doors" to Artspace, forging symbolic and physical linkages that open up to both the East and West sides. The City will work with Artspace to forge new pedestrian connections and passageways from lots aligning Coe Place and Ellicott Street to avoid the "back door" effect possible without careful planning and design.
One of the most important contributing elements to any public space is the quality and quantity of one thing -- trees. Along sidewalks as well as on empty parcels, this plan will highlight the ways adding more of this amenity will elevate property values, provide needed shade and quiet, create beauty, calm traffic, complement well-maintained homes, and improve the overall pedestrian experience. On some streets of Midtown, like Southampton, nearly all trees have been removed, leaving behind a scene of desolation that does nothing to affirm the efforts of residents who dutifully maintain their homes. Some streets of Midtown provide the very picture of the way an absence of trees can rob a place of hope. Others, like the well-maintained Laurel Street, are showcases emphasizing how a complete treewall can buttress a vital and cohesive community. The contrast between streets like Laurel and some others in the surrounding area can be quite stark.
Trees survive for decades, often outliving the buildings they complement. A tree planting initiative is therefore no short-term fix; it is actually a long-term investment whose impact is intended to last for a century or more. This plan calls for planting a diverse array of trees of varying species and heights, emulating a landscape formula devised by Frederick Law Olmsted for the residential streets of Buffalo's Parkside neighborhood. The beauty and variety represented in the planting strips of places like Parkside's Crescent Avenue are difficult to parallel, providing a case for how such a multi-species panorama can create distinctive and eminently livable environments. Species diversity also provides a stronger foothold against tree-infecting pandemics that at one point in the city's history nearly wiped out its entire inventory of beautiful Elms.
Invariably, these public spaces benefit most when coinciding with streets that are heavily populated and well-used. Public spaces benefit no one when very few people are already present to enjoy them. It is ultimately necessary to recognize that public spaces by themselves are quite powerless at creating public life. They can only contribute to environments that already have something to contribute in return - density, pedestrian flow, visibility, centrality. This is why this plan will carefully concentrate public space investments in key intersections, streets and vistas that already seem to be a focus of public life in Midtown. Public spaces will act only to build upon, and to fertilize, the vitality that is there already.
7 Add new and distinctive streetscape amenities
Streets must be approached as though they were "outdoor rooms" whose purpose in public life is elevated through the placement of amenities - the furniture and décor, so to speak - that make them feel like an extension of a home, only no longer private. Like indoor rooms, streets are places that are intimately affected by decisions of design. Are they comfortable places? Are they good places to spend one's time? Do they have personality, character, vibe?
Midtown is a place whose streetscape amenities, if they exist at all, contribute negligibly to the public's experience of the street. Where there are street lamps, they are too few, too bland, too auto-focused. The neighborhood's everpresent cobra-head street lamps and wooden utility poles only add to a sparse, bare-bones amenity scheme for the street that is unbefitting of its often striking architectural setting.
As the "furniture" of the public realm is intimately linked to the livability of the street, it is a vital part of the plan for Midtown. There are many opportunities for novel streetscape additions as varied as creative signing, mini-traffic circles, artful pedestrian lamps, decorative sewer covers, and attractive stoplights. This kind of "décor" is hardly superficial. They pronounce a sense of place. They articulate a community's character. They add flavor. This plan calls for a meticulous attention to the way all of these characteristics correlate in the making of comfortable, inviting communities.
8 Provide a staging ground for arts-related neighborhood improvements
"Argue, if you like, about whether it is art when the work is in private. The important part of public art in public spaces is its larger message: some person, some individual, has passed this way before and has put some of his or her life, time, and attention into making what we see before us. [...] Some person has individualized the place and made it less anonymous." -- David Sucher, City Comforts
The plan for Midtown anticipates a gradual, open-ended process of renewal in the urban environment prompted by the input of artists and creative people. Artists are sources of a caliber of ideas and insights that can rarely be substituted or predicted by urban planning efforts alone, so the role of the city will be as facilitator, not planner, of arts-related improvements in Midtown.
What this plan aims to do, especially, is not over-plan. The beauty of creating a community for artists is that the creative forces of that community will have their own, spontaneous impact. Where the City can provide an occasional canvas - a blank brick wall, an empty lot, an old building, a street corner, a traffic circle - artists will step in to do the rest. This plan identifies several opportunities in the neighborhood where the City can provide that canvas, but will be eager to step aside and allow a creative process to emerge on its own.
9 Encourage bicycle and transit use
Taking transit and riding a bike should a dignified experience, encouraged because it is safe and enjoyable enough to occasionally forgo the use of an automobile. Current conditions in Midtown, as in Buffalo writ large, tend to discourage both of these activities as uninviting, even degrading, experiences. Automobile traffic is simply given preference over alternative transportation modes, resulting in streets that are too wide, traffic that is too fast, bus stops and train stations that are unsocialable and uncomfortable, and neighborhoods that are designed for auto-convenience rather than people-convenience.
In places where there are dozens of parking spaces but no bike racks, two-car garages but inadequate bus shelters, four vehicle lanes but no bike lanes, car washes but no benches, it is unsurprising the automobile enjoys such a monopoly status. The entire urban environment is designed to deter people from using the streets for any purpose that doesn't require a V6 engine. Midtown is a place that's "almost right," where buses, light rail and bicycles are well utilized but are relegated to a second-class status by the preponderance of auto-focused design.
Midtown is in many ways subject to Ameri-cultural forces outside its realm of control. This plan doesn't pretend to discourage the use of automobiles, although it does propose modifications to the urban environment that make alternative transportation options more attractive. The aim of pedestrian, bicycle and transit improvements is to broaden choice, not limit it. Where some proposals for enhancing auto use are put forth -- such as converting Ellicott Street to two-way traffic -- still others are defined that make walking, biking and transit more viable. This plan attempts to strike a balance that makes many transportation options popular simultaneously.
This plan endorses the idea of creating a contiguous bicycle route and center landscaped median for Main Street from Goodell Street to the University District. Ultimately, this is an initiative that will require the careful study and consensus of many community stakeholders around the City of Buffalo, and is naturally beyond the scope of this particular report. In the context of the Midtown plan, however, it's safe to say the idea's a good fit.
In the interim, this plan recommends the City and the NFTA place new bicycle racks outside transit stops and prime retail corners throughout Midtown, especially on Main and Ellicott streets. Some of these racks can be sheltered from inclement weather, providing the protection of a garage-like enclosure. Historically, there has been an incomplete link between bicycle routes and destinations of importance to the community. By providing convenient parking for bicyclists, the City will be a quarter way toward making Midtown a more bicycle-friendly place. In encouraging bicycle use in Midtown, the City will also be encouraging greater exposure to architectural and historical assets less frequently seen by foot or by automobile.
This plan attempts to make transit stops centers of community activity. For too long, the city's LRRT stations have been dull, single-purpose places. To infuse more interest and vitality into the transit experience, this plan calls for installing in the Utica and Summer/Best stations several market stalls and kiosks for the sale of daily conveniences, morning coffee and pastries, flowers, newspapers, or farmer's goods, essentially making the stations an extension of the Main Street retail strip. Inexpensive kiosks have enlivened the dead spaces of corporate plazas, transit stops and pocket parks in cities all over America. Buffalo has yet to catch on. This plan calls for using Midtown's LRRT stations as demonstration projects in using sidewalk commerce to reenliven the transit experience.
This plan also calls for improving the often disastrous public spaces surrounding bus stops and transit stations. At the Utica and Summer/Best stations, in particular, outdoor spaces appear designed to make prolonged use or relaxation an impossibility. At most, benches or seating areas are placed in unsocialable ways or in spaces crowded (or even destroyed) by dysfunctional public art. Bus shelters are often provided, especially on Main Street, but are designed in ways that create uncomfortable closeness when any more than two people are located within them. In some instances, women can be observed actually standing outside bus shelters in the middle of the rain, simply to avoid awkward enclosure with strangers. By embracing an open air design, new shelters can produce more functional social spaces that encourage transit use. Bus shelters and transit stops also tend to be very institutional, very shabby, much less comfortable than the enclosed space of a new car. In the everpresent competition with the automobile, it is essential these facilities are able to provide Cadillac levels of beauty, spaciousness and comfort. As the transit authority fails to do so, many people will, quite simply, continue to drive their Cadillacs.
In the absence of bus shelters, there is rarely any sign of comfortable benches facing the street scene, an almost mandatory amenity for elderly people who depend on transit for getting from place to place. The oversight is glaring, especially on streets where the placement of benches would be desirable even in the absence of transit stops. As a rule, this plan calls for the installation of benches next to every stop on #8 bus line on Main Street.
10 Solidify the unique image and sense of place inherent to the Midtown district
"To thine own self be true." -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet
This is really an umbrella goal, meant to reinforce the idea that improvements in the neighborhood will avoid cookie-cutter, standardized approaches to city planning. Midtown is a unique place. It is not a blank slate. It is a place defined by its own patterns of design, form and character, all long-established and engrained. Midtown's development is the result of a history shaped by global as well as super-local forces, by political unrest that led to the emigration of Germans in the mid-nineteenth century, by the calculated logic of neo-Baroque ideas of city planning under Joseph Ellicott, by the many dozens of individual development decisions of everyone from brewery barons to eccentric skating rink owners to the titans of a nascent automobile industry. New development, restoration efforts and public improvements must all recognize the intense interplay of this history with the shaping of a future true to Midtown's identity.
BLOCK ANALYSIS/RECOMMENDATIONS
Best Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Best Street is a case study in how auto-focused and suburban design has ebbed away at the pedestrian quality of many Buffalo streets. Widened and reconnected to Summer Street a few decades ago, Best Street loses the narrow, comfortable feel it exhibits east of Michigan Avenue and immediately becomes a high speed artery along a two-block stretch, presumably designed for ease of traffic to and from Main Street. Ultimately connected to the Kensington Expressway to the far east, Best is considered one of several prime connections from the highway to the Main Street corridor and Elmwood Village. This plan aims to maintain the street's importance as a secondary auto and bus corridor, but would like to reconfigure the street as a landscaped parkway emphasizing its importance as a gateway into the historic Midtown area.
Once considered the center of gravity for what had been Buffalo's "Auto Row" of showrooms and car dealerships, the corner of Best and Main is today a less prominent focal point for neighborhood life. The existence of the Summer/Best subway station has been simultaneously a draw for community activity as well as a deterrent to it, designed to repel lingering users and ultimately failing to create as much activity nearby as it could have. The space in front of the building, in particular, has been rendered useless by an erratic placement of sculptures of questionable artistic value. The station's ability to contribute to the vitality of the neighborhood is still relatively untapped, however, and it does still have great potential. Sidewalks near the corner with Main are very narrow for the amount of pedestrians accommodated, and are unshaded and overwhelmed by aggressive auto traffic. Conditions for cyclists and pedestrians are unideal. The wide pavement and relative treelessness of Best Street also tend to create a heat island effect in summer and an unpleasant wind effect in winter.
The built landscape of Best Street is an exercise in contrasts. On the north, a relatively intact streetscape of older urban housing on narrow lots prevails, mostly double houses in relatively good condition. To the south are the unsightly, if well-maintained, Pilgrim Village subsidized apartments, a "gift" to the city from 1960s urban renewal efforts that razed several blocks of this once vital community. With deep setbacks, overly generous off-street parking, and buildings that face the street at obtuse angles over an unsocialable grass berm, the complex is a disaster for goals like encouraging pedestrian use and producing a cohesive urban fabric. Its existence is a visually evocative reminder, however, of the importance of preserving and strengthening compact urban streetscapes like the one that exists on the other side of Best Street. The fact that the Pilgrim Village-side of Best Street is so beautifully treed, its landscape so coordinated and planned, especially compared to older streets nearby, is yet another indication of how disinvested streets have been permitted to become in older neighborhoods.
Like many streets in Midtown, Best Street contains buildings that exhibit the qualities of both good stewardship as well as bad. Osmose, a company that has taken advantage of its position along a key transit corridor, has proven to be a good neighbor through its investment in older commercial structures and new builds, built up to the street and surrounded by attractive fencing and landscaping. The Multicultural Potential Center, located at Best and Ellicott, is an important cultural asset providing services as broad as fitness, boxing and dance. Located in a one-story brick structure crowned in a 1920s-era parapet, the Center could be enhanced through the unbricking of its ample windows, opening up scenes from within and projecting a greater sense of vitality onto the urban setting outdoors. A Niagara Mohawk substation, located across the street, is fundamentally a good structure but, like many substations, is surrounded by unfriendly barbed wire fencing and borders an underkempt lot that could be reclaimed as a formalized desire path. It would be curious to see if Niagara Mohawk would express interest in improving the surrounds or even provide a space on its unadorned brick walls for a mural of some kind.
The mostly double houses of Best Street display the characteristics of both dedicated homeownership as well as landlord absenteeism. Some of the houses, like 112 Best, are excellently maintained and contain character features like stained glass windows and turrets. Others, like the brick Italianate 134 Best, are in less than ideal, but salvageable, condition. The City, as a rule, doesn't seem to do enough to reward responsible homeowners who invest time and money into their properties as sidewalks go unrepaired, removed trees are never replanted, and absentee landlords are permitted to allow their properties to deteriorate. Like all other streets in Midtown, Best Street can benefit greatly from those modest interventions that fertilize renewal processes initiated by the residents.
The urbanscape of Best Street gradually deteriorates closer to Michigan Avenue, the corner of which is vacant and City-owned but may, someday, make an ideal site for new small business space or residential development. Corner lots such as these are desperate for attention. They frame a block, socially and physically, and are important ingredients in the image of a neighborhood. The whole streetscape must be emphasized as an urban milieu in need of repair, not demolition, in direct contrast to the isolated suburban island of Pilgrim Village to its south.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Create a landscaped median on Best Street between Ellicott and Main streets
The sheer width of Best Street between Ellicott and Main streets creates conditions inhospitable to pedestrian activity, providing excessive vehicle lanes that permit an ease of traffic flow but little else. At 49 feet in width at the corner of Main, the street acts as a barrier in what should be a seamless border, a gateway, from downtown and the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus into Midtown proper. Interestingly, Summer Street on the other side of Main Street remains very narrow, but handles roughly as much traffic.
Instead of calling for the narrowing of Best Street as a whole, this plan calls for the installation of a 20-foot-wide center landscaped median to calm traffic, reduce the number of vehicle lanes, and provide a new venue for tree plantings that would otherwise be limited along the unusually slender planting strips of either side of the street. This plan accepts that while narrowing the street is one viable solution, it isn't nearly as interesting as a landscaped median.
Like Summer Street, there would be no turning lanes on Best Street as there are now, markedly calming the pace of traffic and improving the safety of both pedestrians as well as drivers. Two vehicle lanes, each about 14.5 feet in width, would provide enough room for both buses and cars. The median would emphasize Best Street as a boulevard, not a thoroughfare, two phrases that describe streets containing roughly equal traffic volumes but evoking different levels of comfort, calm and beauty.
Reconnect Old Best Street to Best Street, rename to Lourdes Lane
When the commercial fabric of Main Street was ripped up to create a seamless connection from Best to Summer street, the former alignment of Best Street, now named Old Best from Ellicott to Main streets, was retained. Now abandoned as a street with any usefulness to the general public, Old Best Street was reduced essentially to a cul-de-sac ending in an underused surface parking lot. The historic Our Lady of Lourdes Church, recently sold to a new owner, anchors the street at one end but is reduced to less-than-prominent status by the blighted Old Best now framing its northern facade. This plan aims to resurrect the usefulness and prominence of Old Best Street, renaming it Lourdes Lane, and reconnecting it to Best Street as a secondary one-way connection from Main Street.
By curving the new Lourdes Lane around to meet Best Street in a 90 degree angle, new lots would be opened up for redevelopment, traffic would be calmed on Best Street because of the new midblock connection, more on-street parking would be created, and an opportunity would be opened up to improve the generally blighted image of this tail end of a once charming street.
Repair streetscape and treewall from Ellicott to Michigan
To emphasize the gateway effect of Best Street leading up to Main, special consideration should be given to providing tools to residents for improvement of the few problem properties along this two-block stretch. The few City-owned vacant parcels, closer to Michigan, should be retained for new housing that complements the existing housing stock. The City's primary contribution, however, would be an aggressive tree replanting initiative that provides a counterpoint to the well-maintained greens of Pilgrim Village. There is a prevailing 32-foot distance between trees along the south side of Best Street; a similar landscape treatment should apply on the north. To provide a visual signification of the contrast between two sides of the street -- urban against suburban -- the standard cobrahead streetlamps and bland stop lights on the northern half of Best should be replaced with quality, pedestrian-oriented ones that emphasize the street's importance as a landscaped boulevard.
Edna Place
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Edna Place, without a direct connection to Main Street, has the advantage of being a quiet residential reserve within walking distance of a busy Main Street and two transit stations. The street's introduction at Ellicott Street shields residents from the noise and danger of through-traffic, retaining the street for mostly local traffic and making it friendly for children's play.
The block between Michigan and Ellicott is framed on both ends by distinctive commercial buildings, giving it a greater sense of place and enclosure. The attractively maintained offices of Osmose, located in renovated historic buildings along Ellicott Street, define a distinctive view corridor down Edna from the east. At the other end, Michigan Avenue between Dodge and Edna contains a small but vital cluster of underutilized mixed-use buildings that, if adaptively reused, have the potential to make Edna one of the few blocks in Midtown within a minute's walk of a corner store.
The prevalence of single-family homes on Edna makes it ideal for investment by starting families who would prefer to own their own homes but would like to avoid also being landlords, which is typical of owners of the mostly double houses in Midtown. Edna contains several excellently maintained homes, like 40 Edna and 46 Edna, whose existence confirm the prospect that the street can be revitalized. The beautiful gardens and historic charm of the many well-maintained cottages often coincide with more discouraging scenes of homes in desperate states of disrepair. Abandoned houses like the poorly-sealed 18 Edna often exhibit those qualities of craftsmanship that would have made them beautiful homes at one time, and would indeed make them beautiful again. Renovated, they could arrest the block's steady but certain decline.
There are also a disproportionately large number of vacant lots on Edna, though not necessarily in the sense that entire chunks of the block have been wiped out en masse. Where vacant parcels are an exception, rather than the rule, they have frequently been taken over as private lawns, often in wonderful states of upkeep. The object now is to halt the preponderance of vacant parcels, as occupied homes generally contribute more to the health and vitality of a block than even the best-maintained side yards. Adding more people and greater density to this block of Edna will be more effective in reversing its decline than a greenspace-focused strategy, a policy that evokes surrender to decline rather than the opposite of it.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Work with private and public partners to renovate two of the block's worst properties
Keeping in mind the notion that a block's worst houses would contribute more to a street if renovated than demolished -- a vacant lot is, after all, merely another form of blight -- this plan urges immediate and concerted action be taken on two of the most at-risk, high-potential properties on the block. This plan advocates for a process that identifies two abandoned single-family homes anchoring each side of the street, such as 11 Edna or 55 Edna, for renovation either with HUD or through assistance to a private homeowner. Again, this strategy would "plant" a few targeted renovations under the proven assumption that it would create momentum and "fertilize" sustained restoration activities nearby.
Complete damaged treewall and repair public right-of-way
Edna Place is a perfect example of the way the City, by its neglect of the street, falls short of rewarding responsible homeowners who maintain their properties. Along the stretch of Edna are several instances in which stumps from former trees still remain in place, often years after a tree's removal. As one of the worst forms of neglect that can be inflicted on a street, leaving behind these stumps sends a message that says, unequivocally, that no one intends to remain a good steward of the street. Private investment in cities is always led and supported by commensurate public investment. It will be important to attend to the details of Edna's public right-of-way, removing stumps near Ellicott and Michigan, completing the treewall through a new planting initiative, repairing damaged sidewalks, and installing a series of new pedestrian-oriented street lamps, each no more than 75 feet separated from the next one.
Promote residential infill on 19 -25 Edna, 37-39 Edna, and 52-58 Edna
On both sides of Edna, what a passerby will first notice is the blight of empty and underkempt parcels that, in general, do not represent the quality of an otherwise mostly intact streetscape of single-family homes. The seven City-owned vacant lots at 19-25 Edna and 52-58 Edna, in particular, should be emphasized for residential development that fills discouraging gaps in the urbanscape and puts more bodies onto the block.
Dodge Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Dodge Street is distressed. Hardly unsalvageable, it seems to have been abandoned to the Fates by a city more than willing let a block go in lieu of the likelihood of any sudden turn-around. In some areas, sidewalks are virtually nonexistent, forming a jagged moonscape totally inaccessible to the elderly and the handicapped, thoroughly unenjoyable to even the most able-bodied pedestrian. People prefer to walk in the streets in the absence of any usable pedestrian space. Hundreds of feet can be measured without a singe tree noted. Two cobrahead streetlamps provide the only evening light between Ellicott and Michigan. If the word "disgrace" were to describe the public sector's inability to see a block's potential and to act upon it, it could be applied to Dodge Street.
Dodge Street's location and even its name make it important historically. Dodge Street was the northern border of the farm owned by Alvin Leonard Dodge, who lived in the city long enough to witness the burning of Village of Buffalo (from which his childhood home was spared) to its development into a world-renowned commercial center. Spanning several hundred acres between the presentday streets of Dodge, Best, Main and Jefferson, the Dodge Farm was sold in the 1880s to the City of Buffalo, which at the time was undergoing a serious housing shortage.
Alvin Leonard Dodge's life was a fascinating drama that included a narrow family escape from British terrorism, a schooling under the stewardship of Millard Fillmore at the little school at Cold Springs, a quiet and prosperous life in a large woodframe house at presentday Main and Dodge, and the rise of a city that almost instantaneously transformed his farm into a beating heart of a rapidly expanding metropolis. That Dodge Street is resembling more and more the fields of Alvin Leonard Dodge's farm should be no comfort to those whose interest in Midtown's history make the street worth saving and remembering. Its significance in the spectrum of city history compels a sentiment that the best way to elevate the street's importance is to repopulate it, not cede it to renaturalization.
Notably, what seems to be a fatal absence of public support has not resulted in commensurate abandonment by residents, at least not totally. Many owners of the mostly double houses keep on keeping on, undiscouraged by a sheer breadth of vacant, weed-strewn lots and a public realm in disarray. Houses like 80 Dodge, in excellent states of upkeep, stand in odd juxtaposition to diamonds-the-rough like 107 Dodge, a quaint cottage with elements of detailed craftsmanship. In all, however, there are 26 vacant lots along the single block between Ellicott and Michigan. Most houses left over are still in relatively good shape, but are seriously disadvantaged by the break-up of the surrounding streetscape, houses too scattered and the street too depopulated to form a coherent sense of place and community. Perhaps this is why, despite a recent renovation, even the well-maintained 118 Dodge is now boarded up.
Dodge Street is inherently worth a serious investment of time, energy and public investment. It is no less proximate to the LRRT line, buses and consumer conveniences than the best streets of Midtown. With a large swath of its former streetscape destroyed, however, Dodge Street is inadequately advantaged by its existing built environment, though it does contain opportunities for reuse and restoration.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Commit to complete overhaul of the public's experience of the sidewalk
From new sidewalks to trees to street lamps, nothing more would uplift the prospects of the street than a coordinated improvement program for the pedestrian right-of-way. This plan advocates for a night-to-day planning approach to streets like Dodge: redoing sidewalks, planting a row of new and diverse trees, and installing attractive street lighting in a very short span of time, making it seem the street is undergoing a dramatic turn-around. With few sidewalks in good repair, only two streetlamps, and the need for over 42 new trees, there is certainly no want of areas in which to begin.
Renovate 97 Dodge
The palatial home at 97 Dodge is one of Midtown's greatest houses. A single-family home of some 4000+ square feet, it is an abandoned and deteriorating vestige of a once prominent residential street. The house is as inspiring in its possibilities as it is disheartening in its potential fate, as demolition appears to be the solution-by-default in the absence of an immediate restoration effort. Demolition will seal the fate of the block as a lost cause, its renovation, by contrast, a symbol of its hope for renewal. To provide strong evidence of the possibility of Dodge's revival, a renovation solution must be found immediately for the home, which is covered in gang graffiti, is completely open to the elements, and is in clear violation of dozens of building codes.
Create new mid-block alley between Dodge and Southampton
A new brick alley over an existing desire path leading from Southampton to Dodge would break up an otherwise long and monotonous block. The preponderance of vacant parcels on both streets provides an opportunity to cut through the block pattern and form new corners on which to focus development or passive greenspace. Placed on the border between the City-owned lots of 89 and 91 Dodge, a new brick alley could frame development of smaller "cottage style" units on shallow lots, facing toward the alley which would act as a new residential street. At no more than 15 feet in width, the new alley could become, like Virginia Place in Allentown, a charming formalized passageway. It could have an inviting and characteristic name, such as Alvin's Alley, inspired by Alvin Leonard Dodge.
Aggressively market vacant parcels for new residential infill
Utilizing the City's Homesteading Program, the many vacant lots of Dodge Street should be actively marketed to housing developers and potential homeowners following the completion of the Artspace project. The City should consider a subdivision of lots along the proposed alley between Dodge and Southampton to allow for the construction of affordable cottage or carriage house-type units.
Southampton Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Southampton Street, defining Midtown's middle ground between East Utica and Best streets, is a street oddly juxtaposing consistent rows of vacant lots against mostly double houses of unusually good architectural character. Though considered a close cousin of the architecturally noteworthy Northampton Street, it is unfortunately not the recipient of the same good fortune.
Only 13 of 24 lots on the block between Ellicott and Michigan still contain buildings; eleven homes of likely very good character have either been demolished or burned. The good news is that thirteen houses of noteworthy character and generally good upkeep are still extant. The bad news is that the block now faces the uphill battle of rebuilding, in a character consistent with the block's prevailing urban design, a daunting number of vacant properties.
The street begins at a key nodal point of the Midtown district, an area of Ellicott Street of beautiful homes proximate to the Artspace project, whose rear entrance will virtually back up into Southampton. The eleven vacant lots on either side of Southampton near Ellicott are all City-owned, all assembled and theoretically available for new residential infill. As previously discussed, Southampton's redevelopment would be more sensible with a break-up of its block length through the introduction of a new brick alley to Dodge Street, at the terminus of which the beautiful 97 Dodge would be visible.
With the sheer breadth of vacant parcels giving the block a more nondescript appearance than it deserves, introducing the variety and "surprise" of a mid-block alley would divide existing lots into alternative configurations, with new development taking on potentially different and alternative forms.
The existing homes of Southampton are hardly nondescript, however. The architectural character of houses like 40 Southampton and 47 Southampton are truly admirable, their details of craftsmanship representative of the best Buffalo residences of late 1890s and early 1900s vintage. The public realm of the street is lacking, certainly, but its sidewalks are actually in good shape. It's nice that at least this minimum is maintained dutifully. There is an unremoved stump on the northeast corner of Michigan, and about 29 new tree plantings are required. There are only four streetlamps on the block, all the cobrahead variety.
The street is threatened by insensitive renovations that alter the original character of houses like 42 Southampton, whose wood exterior has been replaced with vinyl, a common alteration in Midtown that does lessen the impact of its historicity. These alterations demonstrate the importance of encouraging renovations that recognize the value of period materials in preserving the character of older houses and the marketability of a historic neighborhood writ large.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Restore treewall and introduce distinctive streetscape amenities
What Southampton needs most is a quality streetscape environment to frame the good attributes of the block's residential architecture. The street's tree canopy decimated, it is only appropriate that this block is a focus of a new planting initiative. To highlight the street as a unique and separate place, this plan calls for the installation of a contiguous row of trees that flower in the spring, such as cherry trees. Midtown, as well as Buffalo writ large, is bereft of those flowering trees that announce the arrival of spring and the emergence from a long and cold winter. To further the impact of the replanting, cobrahead streetlamps should be replaced with quality, pedestrian-oriented ones.
Target new residential infill along 16-36 Southampton and 25-35 Southampton
Eleven 30-foot wide lots provide an open canvas for new housing at the closest edges of the Artspace impact area. 25-35 Southampton is the site of the proposed alleyway from Dodge Street, which could provide a venue for small, affordable cottages or carriage house-style units on shallow lots. 16-36 Southampton could provide space for seven new detached units or a series of new rowhouses.
Coe Place
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Coe Place is the most historically and urbanistically significant street in the Midtown neighborhood. At one time a brick pedestrian pathway, converted to a residential street by a quixotic nineteenth-century skating rink operator, Coe Place is a charming, very narrow street, originally no more than fifteen feet wide, lined with a collection of close-knit Queen Anne-style houses whose singular attributes are unmatched anywhere else in Buffalo.
Described by residents as a family, not merely a street, Coe Place has its own sense of place, its own composite image that makes it truly special in the broad panoply of residential streets in Buffalo. Having its origin in circumstances unusual to a city where the layout of streets was generally coordinated by a central authority, such as the Holland Land Company or the city's planning function, Coe Place was a private street organized around very slender and shallow lots atypical of the prevailing 30x100 lot sizes common to Buffalo. The houses, all constructed by a single builder, contain almost no lawns to the benefit of a compact building arrangement remarkably conducive to reinforcing the social togetherness now observed on the street. People live very close to many other people, on a street whose design encourages social interaction. It is too narrow for aggressive traffic but wide enough for children's play and adult relaxation, lined with houses with spacious porches that prompt neighbors to talk to one another on a regular basis. Coe Place is a microcosm of the classic urban village, where urban density and small town comfort coalesce.
The gorgeous Queen Anne's of Coe Place, some built flush to the street in a striking urban typography, are gems in the rough awaiting rediscovery. Originally nineteen houses in all over a 2.5-acre site, they were built in a speculative venture from 1890 to 1891 by skating rink operator George Chadeayne. Interviewed by Buffalo Times reporter Sybil Reppert in 1930, Chadeayne was said to have reasoned that "people needed houses worse than they needed places to skate," leading him to raze his skating rink on the site to create a residential neighborhood in its place. Chadeayne actually recycled the salvaged lumber from the rink to construct the houses on the south side side of the street, completed in the winter of 1891. The seven houses of north side of the street were the first to be built, however, being the smallest and most intricately trimmed, on lots no more than 28x45 feet in dimension. Of nineteen houses constructed between Main and Ellicott streets, fourteen remain extant, with the few vacant lots narrow enough to be rather inconspicuous as quaint side yards.
Named after William S. Coe, Chadeayne's father-in-law and a prominent Buffalo transit entrepreneur, Coe Place was made a public street by an act of the Common Council in 1928, after which its original bricks were replaced with concrete paving. Its unique property divisions remain, however, a remnant of civil engineer William White's attempt to create a lot pattern that allowed Chadeayne to avoid creating a new street and to maximize the area devoted to residential development. Each lot is connected to Main or Ellicott streets by an extremely narrow strip of land under the alignment of the Coe Place footpath. The divisions of land beneath the street are still recognized by deeds as belonging to individual homeowners on the block.
Today, the fourteen remaining Queen Anne houses represent one of the best examples of any stylistically consistent body of architecture in the city. The unified form and design of the houses is unique to Coe Place, each one containing subtle differences in materials and detail, some altered by modifications made gradually over the past hundred years. Porches contain styling motifs as varied as Gingerbread, Greek Revival and Adirondack Rustic. Queen Anne-style shingles come in an assortment of decorative patterns, including fishscale, zigzag, hexagon and a few others. One particular feature of several houses stands out as particularly unusual to Buffalo residential architecture: thumb molding, so named because its profile resembles a particular view of the thumb, found along many gables and eaves. Houses like 30 Coe also contain so-called "Yankee gutters," usually installed in conjunction with thumb molding and generally known to be inadequate in preventing roof leakage in a Buffalo climate.
Today, Coe Place's potential is vast. At virtually a stone's throw from the Sarabeth Building, it is likely attract the most investor attention once Artspace is situated in the neighborhood. The housing conditions of the street are quite distressed, however, containing perhaps a larger proportion of abandoned and underkempt houses than any other block in the study area. Many of the houses, such as 33 Coe and 38 Coe, appear to be in steady processes of renovation.
Coe Place is a street undergoing a self-initiated, grassroots restoration process, but the progress is too slow. Four houses on the block remain in totally abandoned states of upkeep. Residents report that a tree grows through the living room floor of 28 Coe, a charming and highly salvageable house in discouraging shape. Other houses, like 19 Coe, are poorly sealed and are regularly broken into by people seeking a venue for criminal activity. Almost no houses are in immaculate condition, with the notable exception of houses like 41 Coe and especially 1050 Ellicott, a shingle-clad cottage on the corner that is certainly one of best houses in Midtown.
Up until recently, the city's neglect of the public right-of-way probably reinforced a climate of disinvestment in the block. The City had reportedly never made any major repairs to the street's infrastructure since 1928, when it was converted to a public street. Up until mid-2005, its sidewalks had all but crumbled away into gravel and fine powder. The vehicle lane remains in deplorable condition, an unsightly patchwork of makeshift repairs.
The City did commence a street repaving effort in 2005 that was thankfully halted mid-way. New sidewalks installed, the street almost took on the look of a widened suburban drive. Granite curbs, an essential division between pedestrian and vehicle zones, were removed and replaced with curbs-and-gutters typical to suburban subdivisions, robbing the street of its historic charm as well as the built-in safety of a defined barrier. The vehicle lane repaving was halted as planning was underway to reconstruct the street in its original brick.
A narrow planting strip was also eliminated during the sidewalk reconstruction, depriving the street of what little green was able to sprout along a very narrow right-of-way. The few street lamps extant on the street, now precariously aligned along an uneven and sloping sidewalk, are not properly fitted for the installation of flower baskets to recompense for a loss of greenspace. The curbs-and-gutters also effectively expanded the usable lane width for vehicles, widening the street from its historic 15-foot width to nearly 19 feet. Vehicle speeds are likely to increase as a result, as well as the tendency of drivers to park on sidewalks, exposing porches, especially on the north side where there are zero setbacks, to damage from swinging car doors or outright collision. The livability of Coe Place will continue to be impaired by this essentially auto-focused design formula, emphasizing speed over calm, and cars over people.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Repave street in brick
Coe Place should be repaved in brick in a unique and inviting pattern, such as diagonal herringbone, to emphasize the street's charming and historic character, to slow traffic, and to provide a needed aesthetic boost to the block. Originally a brick pedestrian footpath, Coe Place would be restored to its original, pre-1928 status. Enhancing safety as well as beauty, brick tends to act as a natural, built-in rumble strip, prompting drivers to travel at low speeds. Through-traffic would be discouraged, while walking and biking would be encouraged. A brick walkway would encourage nontraditional wayfinding, whereby pedestrians feel invited to walk or bike down a street in unplanned and spontaneous circumstances, drawn further inward by its arresting or unusual qualities. Dramatically calming traffic, a brick street could also reclaim it as a safe zone for relaxation and children's play, a pastime documented by historical photographs from the period before the street was repaved.
This plan wants Coe Place to be "discovered" after many decades of having been hidden from the eyes of the city. What would be the first street to be repaved in brick in many years in Buffalo, its reconstruction would act as an invitation in two ways: alluring outsiders to explore the street from Main, and luring more Coe Place residents to take lawn chairs out onto the street on sunny days.
Reestablish granite curbs, narrow street to original 15-foot width
This plan is agnostic on the height at which new granite curbs should be established. Two alternatives are within scope: a low-lying curb that delineates between pedestrian and vehicle zones but effectively redesigns the street a Dutch-style Woonerf, like a pedestrian mall but vehicle-accessible; or a six-inch high curb evoking the one that existed prior to the installation of the suburban-style curb-and-gutter, retaining Coe's design as a traditional American street with vehicle and pedestrian zones placed at different elevations. There are advantages and disadvantages to both arrangements, but it was determined that the current curb-and-gutter installed in 2005 should be removed and replaced, notwithstanding. This would require a reversal of a very recent public investment, but would also acknowledge that where mistakes are made, they should be reversed. Moreover, the haphazard installation of the curb-and-gutter makes its own case for replacement, especially at both ends of the street where its fusion with existing raised curbs on Ellicott and Main streets is sloppy, at best. The reestablishment of a curb would allow the street's re-narrowing to its historic 15-foot width, slowing vehicle speeds and reemphasizing the street's cozy, close-knit character. Whether tall or flat curbs, they would redefine the proper territory for vehicle traffic and reclaim it as a pedestrian space, its original purpose in 1889.
Establish granite markers at corners with Ellicott and Main that announce street name
Two street-width granite markers, installed at the entryways to Coe from Ellicott and Main Streets, could announce the name of Coe Place at either end of the street. A creative approach to street identification, a granite street name marker would supplement street signs, and would accomplish their task in much more place-defining and place-enhancing ways.
Designate Coe Place a local and national historic district
Coe Place is a unique urbanscape whose aesthetic, architectural and historical significance is without dispute. It should receive permanent protection from demolition, unsensitive alternations and incompatible new construction. Adding it to the National Register of Historic Places would also make available needed income tax credits made available by the federal government for renovation of historic properties. Historic district protection would add certainty to the block's future, assuring home investors that complementary renovations nearby would only enhance their own, compounding the assurance that beautiful nearby homes could not legally be demolished and replaced with a blight of vacant lots, still a possibility in Coe Place's near-term future.
Target housing grants and code enforcement activities to at-risk houses
The City will aggressively focus housing assistance programs like the 50/50 Program to houses on Coe Place in poor and fair condition, currently making up roughly half the houses on the block. Abandoned homes like 19 Coe, once the home of former state attorney general Hamilton Ward, are prime candidates for substantial renovation. As the houses of Coe Place are hardly secure from the threat of demolition, it will be critical that every portion of the built environment is rescued from continued decay. Aggressive code enforcement may be required, wherever these actions do not result in recommendation for demolition.
Reclaim 40 Coe for an entryway into Artspace
40 Coe Place, a vacant parcel now used as a gravel parking space, is located strategically in a site that could be reclaimed as a stairway entrance into the rear portion of the Artspace area, where a grouping of rowhouse-style live/work units are planned. The lot serves a purpose per se, as private parking for a house on Coe Place, but will be less than its most ideal use once the Artspace project is completed. Either Artspace or the City should look into acquiring the privately-owned space so linkages can be enhanced between Artspace and the near-East Side. The potential of Artspace to positively impact Midtown will be enhanced if pedestrian traffic is diffused onto all sides of the project area, rather than only at its entrances onto Main and Northampton streets, as currently planned. A "backdoor" effect can be avoided if the lot is taken for this purpose, establishing needed connections to Coe Place where a strong and direct impact is needed.
Replace existing streetlamps and add new ones
The streetlamps of Coe Place are appropriate. They're not excessively tall and are scaled for the benefit of pedestrians, not merely automobiles that have their headlights of their own. The installation of lights like these should be encouraged all over Midtown where cobrahead lamps are more prevalent. For Coe Place, however, their number is too few and they may not be distinctive or interesting enough for a street that deserves special treatment. Public Works is encouraged to find more aesthetically-distinguished pedestrian lamps that can be installed in larger numbers on the street, ideally as many as ten over the 100-foot right-of-way. They should be capable of carrying hanging flower baskets, adding needed color to a street now devoid of a planting strip.
Northampton Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Northampton Street was the most prestigious address of the old German neighborhood, attracting its upwardly mobile middle class and many of its wealthiest business families as residents. The intersection of Ellicott and Northampton streets is the architectural focus of its often-palatial late nineteenth century homes, many recently renovated. The intersection is also the visual (thought not actual) terminus of Ellicott Street viewed from the rolling hills of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. In the process of being "rediscovered," this node in the Midtown district is already on the receiving end of private reinvestment activity that will certainly be enlarged as the Artspace project moves forward.
Northampton Street will be the site of the primary vehicular entrance into the Artspace project area, where a sloping entryway already leads from Northampton into the rear area where a series of artist rowhouse-type units are planned. Nearby, an architectural milieu, including the gorgeously renovated house 51 Northampton, will lure investment further inward toward the East Side. It is precisely this area east of Ellicott Street where investment activity is most needed.
As soon as Northampton crosses east of Holland Place, the integrity of the original housing declines rapidly. In what should be a showcase of a stabilized East Side neighborhood strengthened by its unique character, Northampton ebbs in the stretches beyond the focus of its largest and most elaborately detailed homes. Houses like 91 and 94 Northampton sit abandoned, awaiting rescue. Vacant lots have already begun their intrusion onto the street, although in most instances have been revived as well-maintained gardens and side yards. In one particular instance, it's obvious that several homes were demolished to make way for a "plain Jane" suburban-style home on a nearly half-acre lot at 61 Northampton, right in the mix on the corner with Ellicott, intruding upon an architecturally sensitive environment. It will be crucial to stabilize at-risk properties on the block to prevent its further degradation or replacement by ahistoric development.
The pedestrian right-of-way of Northampton is, in a word, unspectacular. The lack of a consistent tree canopy, the street's unhappy marriage with wooden utility poles and cobrahead lamps, and the lack of "something" useful as a centering devise for the street, is all the more noticeable in a place like Northampton Street with its amazing landscape of landmark structures. Nothing about the street trumpets its one-of-a-kind position in an East Side that desperately needs places in which to take pride. This unspectacular, nondescript public realm only underlines the need for investment, public and private, in parts of the street that have yet to be reclaimed.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Install mini-traffic circle at the corner of Northampton and Ellicott streets
The intersection of Northampton and Ellicott streets is really a center of gravity for Midtown. It is not only a terminating vista for Ellicott Street but it is also the focus of some of its best architecture. Within its orbit are not merely the gorgeous homes nearby but also the Buffalo Electric Vehicle Company, St. Vincent's Convent, and Coe Place only a block away. With the installation of a landscaped traffic circle, the corner could act as a centering device for the block. It would also calm traffic at an intersection where very few drivers come to a full stop anyway. In what would be the first traffic circle to be installed in the city in recent memory, it would beautify the area and set it apart.
Bury utility lines, install new Olmstedian street lamps
Northampton Street was always viewed as a parkway, a residential reserve connecting Main Street to Humboldt Park, now Martin Luther King Park. The wooden utility poles do little to exemplify that. Highlighting the nineteenth century character of the blocks between Main and Michigan, new Olmstedian street lamps should be installed in their place following what would be the only appropriate course for addressing the utility lines that now decorate the block - their burial undergound.
Reinstall tree canopy
The City should strongly consider planting a consistent row of disease-resistant Elm trees along the stretch between Main and Michigan streets. No other tree fully embodies the characteristics of Buffalo's historic streetscapes, and no other could do more to embolden Northampton Street as part of that historic milieu.
Holland Place
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Holland Place benefits greatly from being an entirely local street, where the so-little traffic the street experiences generally serves only the houses on the block. Only one block in length in a strategic area between two very high-potential streets, Northampton and Riley, it is poised for renewal activity.
The same urban geography that gives rise to its infrequent use for automobile through-traffic also makes it very friendly for children's play and community gatherings. Nary a summer day can be observed without children playing on the streets, hanging out on porches or playing basketball. This is the kind of activity successful urban neighborhoods can sustain on a regular basis. Holland Place is already there.
The housing stock of Holland Place is becoming quite undermined, however, with much of this regress having occurred in only the past few years. A rash of arsons took down several unoccupied homes in recent times, leaving behind a large collection of vacant lots, now numbering ten and rising. Holland Place has not been so much the recipient of investment activity as it has a steady decline. Very few homes on the block are in characteristically "good" condition, and none are what would be considered excellent. The block is still ideally positioned for reinvestment. If forward movement is met on St. Vincent's Convent, Northampton Street's residential properties, the old horse stable on the corner with Riley, there is a strong likelihood of new interest arising in the block's future. The block could be within a stone's throw of a few new corner stores, renovated homes and a major investment in artist housing. The advent of Artspace can only move that process forward.
Like nearly every block in Midtown, the City has been lacking in its reinforcement of the public realm. Tree stumps abound, sidewalk repair is spotty, and some vacant homes on the block are still awaiting renovation years, even decades, after their abandonment. 40 Holland is a sort of poster child of a pattern of neglect that led to the block descending into this current state, having been empty now for 15+ years and surrounded on all sides by vacant lots. Still, single family households like the one at 24 Holland keep on keeping on, dutifully maintaining their homes and even maintaining vacant lots owned by the City. Encouraging this activity through modest public investments in the block will be paramount in shoring up this very key part of Midtown.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Install large flower pots in the middle of the street
Short of creating a landscaped median, the installation of large flower pots, similar to those that exist on the sidewalks of many parts of the city like Elmwood Avenue and outside City Hall, would calm traffic, beautify the street, and reinforce social activities that are already prevalent on the block. These planters, perhaps a half-dozen in all, would be lined in the center of the street at equal lengths from Northampton to Riley. They could even be planted with tulips to recognize, in a subtle way, the charming name of the street.
Repair public right-of-way
Getting back to the basics of maintaining sidewalks, replanting needed trees, and providing adequate and attractive street lighting would rescue the block from a perception of decline.
Ellicott Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Ellicott Street is one of the most important and historic streets in the city. Named after Joseph Ellicott, who drafted Buffalo's radial grid system in 1803, Ellicott Street begins downtown and ends in the Midtown neighborhood. Markedly changing character north of Best Street, Ellicott becomes a comfortable, meandering residential drive beyond a zone dominated by the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus closer to North Street. The street contains some of the best houses in Midtown, as well as some of its finest opportunities for redevelopment.
Most conspicuous is a small grouping of low-rise commercial structures recently renovated by Osmose, near the intersection with Edna Place. Built a century ago as a malting house for the German American Brewing Company, this complex at 980 Ellicott is a case study in enlightened adaptive reuse. Osmose has been meticulous in attention to the streetscape, with closely-knit trees planted within tastefully selected iron grilles. A block up, the Mount Cavalry CME Church acts as a placeholder for the corner with Dodge, forming a striking architectural pose. The home at 2050 Ellicott, part of the collection of houses on Coe Place, is perhaps the most beautiful cottage-style residence in Midtown. These historic structures are paired with many newer developments that in one way clash with the older built environment, but in other ways does add something to a vital mix of architectural styles, shapes and materials. Perhaps the oddest of these juxtapositions is the gated community at 1030 Ellicott, where thirteen rowhouses face toward a central courtyard and common swimming pool. The less successful of these intrusions are the two suburban-style duplexes at 1037 and 1047 Ellicott, completed in 1991. The duplex at 1047 Ellicott is perhaps the most damaging, as it forms a highly disconcerting terminating vista for Coe Place.
The corner of Northampton and Ellicott streets is a very central part of the Midtown district, containing some of its best homes and forming a sort of placeholder for the neighborhood. Houses like the 1093 and 1094 Ellicott are simply fabulous. Toward Riley are perhaps the most important components of this architectural milieu, as well as some of the best opportunities for quality infill development. St. Vincent's Convent, a five-story, E.B. Green-designed masterpiece, frames the block at the conclusion of Ellicott Street and Riley. Constructed between 1898 and 1899, it was long the home of a Catholic convent and girl's orphanage and high school. E.B. Green was the most prolific local architect of the turn of the century and was known for such works as the Dun Building and the Greater Buffalo Savings Bank. St. Vincent's remains a hidden secret of his because of its obscure location. Its main façade, with a 200-foot frontage on Ellicott Street, is built of orange brick trimmed with paler brick and stone and ornamented with neo-Gothic, Classical and Renaissance details. It was briefly the Buffalo campus of Erie Community College from 1971 to 1981, before being abandoned for their new downtown campus in the Old Post Office. St. Vincent's has been vacant and exposed to the elements since 1982.
Ellicott Street terminates in a nondescript, empty lot. In what had been the site of two houses, the lots are need minimally maintained and do little to announce a dramatic conclusion to an important street. Establishing a vista at the end of the very conclusion of such an important part of the radial grid plan will be essential.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Restore two-way traffic north of Goodell
Ellicott Street should be seen as a two-way boulevard, but from Goodell Street north it is configured for only one-way traffic, confusing the flow of traffic, impeding full exposure to the neighborhood's scenic and architectural assets, and encouraging high vehicle speeds to the detriment of pedestrians and cyclists. When Michigan Avenue was converted to two-way traffic, it was to the benefit of everybody. The same should be done for Ellicott Street, retaining a northbound parking lane and providing space for two lanes of traffic in each direction.
Bury utility lines, install distinctive street lamps
Ellicott Street's importance in Buffalo's radial grid system is deflated by the absence of modern, attractive street lighting. The current wooden utility lines should be buried and replaced. This plan, however, encourages the City to consider truly unique, truly interesting replacement lamps, set to the scale of pedestrians and adding to the flavor of a creative, arts-focused community.
Install bike racks at key corners
Small, unobtrusive but attractive bike racks should be installed at the corners with Best, Northampton and Riley streets. These linkages would allow people to safely store bicycles in areas near employment sites (like Osmose), transit stops, and residential development areas (like Artspace and potentially St. Vincent's Convent).
Reserve 1062, 1066 and 1070 Ellicott for south entrance to Artspace
A key entryway into the Artspace project area could be placed at the three adjoined lots of 1062, 1066 and 1070 Ellicott streets. It will be important to make the border between Artspace and the Midtown neighborhood as porous as possible, so that the activity it fosters is allowed to spill over into the areas nearby. It won't be enough to simply allow one connection to open up to Northampton Street; the physical linkages must be many, not few, to allow dispersed pedestrian traffic as well as a general perception that the project is part of the neighborhood.
Consider creative signage at terminus with Riley
To add quirk to a physical setting that includes the gorgeous houses of Northampton, the key pedestrian corridor of Riley, and the majestic presence of St. Vincent's Convent, this plan suggests the addition of an eccentric stop sign on Ellicott Street at the corner with Riley. Following some precedents that have been set along other destinations, like Route 66, it would be an ordinary stop sign with an additional red sign beneath it, reading "In The Name of Love, Before You Break My Heart." The sign, of course, would quote a lyric from singer Diana Ross. This creative stop sign would invite local tourist traffic to swing by the neighborhood to see, well a ridiculous sign, with the hope that they might also see the architectural and scenic assets of Midtown as well. It would also display the City's willingness to take risks and have fun with their planning efforts.
Find renovation solution for St. Vincent's Convent, reclaim public space for public use St. Vincent's Convent has been a white albatross around the neck of the Midtown community since its abandonment by ECC over twenty-five years ago. Still privately owned, it had been subject to a handful of redevelopment attempts, but nothing appears to have gone further than a sign announcing a redevelopment effort, still plastered alongside the building and listing James D. Griffin as mayor. There has been some interest arising around the building as a potential space for new apartments, but the City must be proactive in assuring that a redevelopment solution is found sooner than later for the project. The former public space beside St. Vincent's was, at one time, a playground associated with the orphanage and high school there. A dramatic staircase, though crumbling, leads down into the space from the property of the Squier House on Main Street. It's easy to imagine the site being revived for community gatherings, performances and public art displays. The City might consider whether owning the site as a public park would be ideal.
Riley Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Riley Street is a priority nodal area for investments important to the future of the neighborhood. Divided into small blocks by Ellicott and Holland, it is a key pedestrian corridor to Main and Michigan streets from areas south. Proximate to neighborhood landmarks like the Old St. Vincent's Convent, the Squier House, the old Packard Showroom, and two character commercial structures on the corners with Holland and Michigan, it is also a scene of principal architectural importance.
The street is one of the oldest corridors in the Midtown district, laid out in 1859 in commemoration of the death six years prior of Major General Bennett Riley, a prominent Buffalo citizen whose ample frame house existed at Main and Barker streets. General Riley, an important figure under President James Polk during the Mexican War, was a native Virginian and a veteran of conflicts dating back to the War of 1812. His leadership in the Mexican War laid the foundation for America's acquisition of California, over which Riley was later military governor and was instrumental in its attaining statehood. In 1849 his retirement brought him to Buffalo, a place of which he was very fond, and died shortly thereafter in 1853, leaving behind a substantial collection of antiques. To this day, the Historical Society retains Riley's hat, epaulettes, and two gold-hilted presentation swords as memories of his late love affair with Buffalo.
Riley Street forms the terminus of Ellicott Street, one of the most important original streets of Joseph Ellicott's radial grid pattern devised in 1803. Two vacant lots at 44 and 46 Riley, owned by Cash Realty and once the site of two houses, represent the final terminus of Ellicott, though it is only viewable as a terminating vista from Northampton, one block south. It is still an important
nodal point in Midtown, framing the last block of Ellicott in what is generally a very striking urbanistic milieu. The two lots will play an enormous role as visual cues luring pedestrians down Ellicott from Northampton as part of a nontraditional wayfinding strategy.
The housing stock is in mixed condition, but where there are few abandoned lots, they tend to be dutifully maintained by private homeowners. The collection of housing on the block visibly contains some examples of homes markedly older than the typically post-1890 homes of areas southward around the former Dodge Farm. Houses like the brick cottage at 70 Riley look as though they could date as far back as the 1860s, when the area was still sparsely populated. The brick two-story commercial structure at 65 Riley is particularly charming. Most recently the home of VaStola Heating and Air Conditioning, 65 Riley was a livery stable owned by residents J.F. Lynch and Homer Tarbell in the late nineteenth century. With character archways and detailing, it is an ideal site for a corner store. In fact, two such opportunities exist along this stretch, including the brick Italianate 1325 Michigan on the corner with Riley.
Still, many homes of Riley Street are in terrible states of repair, including the abandoned 47 Riley as well as 93 Riley, a beautiful house that is one of only very few in Midtown owned by the City of Buffalo. It will be important to maintain and rebuild Riley's built assets, as a healthy density of homeowners will provide crucial markets for potential walkable retail opportunities nearby.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Purchase and renovate 65 Riley for new retail space
The brick livery stable at 65 Riley is a small building with vast potential as a place holder for the corner of Holland and Riley. The City should strongly consider performing its own renovation project of the building for the creation of a new corner store.
Reclaim 44 and 46 Riley as community garden terminating Ellicott Street
The two lots at 44 and 46 Riley form the final terminus of one of Buffalo's most important and historic streets. Its future should be cast as a community garden with a small water fountain, a brick wall with a mural, and comfortable, inviting seating areas.
Commit to new tree planting initiative
Riley Street is probably the most important pedestrian corridor in the Midtown district. With its small blocks, character buildings and potential for retail that draws people further inward from Main Street, Riley Street is an important and vital target for landscape improvements that enhance the pedestrian experience. It will be important to establish a strong tree canopy along Riley to pull investment activity in its direction following the completion of Artspace. Riley Street is a particularly appropriate venue for tree plantings of many different species.
Laurel Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Laurel Street is the healthiest, most stable block in all of Midtown. It is a model for the way things ought to be very for every street in the neighborhood, with its dense urban fabric, complete tree wall, and vital, lively community atmosphere. It is almost entirely composed of tightly-packed double houses in excellent states of upkeep. Kids play on sidewalks in large numbers, teenagers toss footballs in the street, men work on their cars, people tend to their gardens, and elderly citizens sit on their porches, taking in the whole scene. It is the very picture of the vibrant, functioning urban neighborhood.
The most conspicuous quality of the street is its near total lack of vacant lots. Only one exists in the very heart of the neighborhood, now a private garden tended by the owners of 23 Laurel. The vacant parcels at 59 and 61 Laurel conclude the street near Michigan, a discouraging scene that is however typical to corner lots near Michigan. The interior of the block is entirely intact, an image that contradicts so many nearby blocks whose built environment has certainly ebbed over the years. Laurel Street probably looks much as it did when the houses on the street were first constructed, a window into the Midtown that existed before its relative fall from grace.
The street has great architectural character as well, only enhanced by its complete street wall. The multifamily apartment block at 53/55 Laurel frames a striking conclusion to the block and is paired with the equally arresting Tudor-style double next door at 57 Laurel. With the highest proportion of excellently maintained houses of any street in Midtown, it should be no surprise that only two of its more than 30 properties are in less-than-ideal condition. It will be crucial, however, to reclaim these properties before their blight affects everything nearby.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Install Playwalk demonstration project
The sidewalk has always been a staging ground for children's play. In fact, planning and sociological studies have long established that children play most often close to home, rarely more than 100 feet away from the house. In contrast to common wisdom, playgrounds are not the most frequently used playspaces in cities, and children do not necessarily need play equipment to keep themselves entertained. Children only need a common gathering space where kids from the block feel invited to meet up with one another in spontaneous, unplanned circumstances. The sidewalk has always the most appropriate place for these unplanned gatherings, but planners have not always recognized it as such. (In fact, Le Corbusier made constant overtures on the need for vast, open spaces in place of the street as a gathering area for children.) This plan hopes to take Laurel Street's already healthy assimilation of children's play to the next level. A Playwalk is an experimental and yet time-tested planning concept. It's also a very simple one: it is a sidewalk that is at least eight feet wide. For Laurel Street, this plan advocates for the implementation of a 12-foot wide Playwalk, between 60 and 75 feet wide, to cover two sides of the center of the street between Main and Michigan. The Playwalk would be flanked on either side with two benches, trees would be retained, and only a few on-street parking spaces would be sacrificed. This plan predicts the Playwalk will be a magnet for children, and could become a demonstration project for their implementation in other parts of the city.
Attack the few problem properties early
The houses at 24 Laurel and 40 Laurel represent the only two residential buildings on the block in very poor states of condition. It is usually said that the decline of a good street always starts with one or two problem properties. It would be a tragedy if this downward spiral were allowed to commence on such a valuable street. Immediate action should be taken to rescue these two properties from further decline, with renovation solutions found as early as possible. They are essential components of unified block of otherwise well-maintained homes.
East Utica Street
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
East Utica Street, as a corollary to Best Street, is a northern border and gateway through the Midtown district. Unlike Best Street, it still represents a vital, if struggling, commercial core proximate to the corner with Main Street. The retail potential of this corridor is vast, bolstered by a highly-trafficked Metro station and a collection of adaptable retail structures awaiting new invigoration.
The architectural character of East Utica Street is very distinct. It is plain to see that it was once a very prominent address, with several very large homes remaining, some converted to multifamily residences. 42 East Utica and 48 East Utica represent some of the very few multifamily residences in Midtown, set back in deep lots with generous lawns and still displaying the beauty of their better years. The condition of properties on East Utica is nothing for braggadocio. Hardly a single property is really considered in excellent condition, thought most of the properties on East Utica are undoubtedly positioned for rehabilitation.
One of the most prominent residents of this block was Charles Dudley Arnold, who made his final home in Buffalo here after 1923. It was largely on account of his reputation as an expert photographer of architectural subjects that he would later receive a prestigious appointment as official photographer of the World's Columbian Exhibition in 1893 and, later, the Pan American Exhibition in 1901. Arnold is largely recognized as the very first professional photographer whose focus was on architecture, making his mark with a landmark 1888 self-published book of twenty architectural views entitled Studies in Architecture - At Home and Abroad. with his reputation as a photographer of classical European architecture so well established, Charles Dudley Arnold used his many connections to architect-clients to elevate his career and accomplish a position of renown. His home in Buffalo, where he died in 1927, is still extant at 48 East Utica Street.
The corner of Utica and Main Streets, and all of Utica to each side of Main, was definitely a place-to-be many decades ago. The Royal Arms night club on West Utica, a half block from Main, was one of only many establishments that added to a collection of jazz clubs and taverns that were scattered from everywhere from Richmond to Jefferson avenues. One of these taverns at the corner of Michigan and East Utica, called the Windmill, was a favorite of Grover Cleveland, who mentioned it often in his writings. It was demolished only a couple years ago with much protest.
The historic legacy of East Utica Street is still barely recognized, but its built environment bears such a testimony to its importance that it will be essential to prevent its further degradation. The public sector can have a very big role in a process that bolsters investment in the block and creates opportunities for enhanced public life on the street.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Resurrect tree canopy
The City should strongly consider replanting a row of disease-resistant Elm trees on this block, providing the beauty of a shaded canopy, calming traffic, and creating conditions for restoration of the housing stock.
Install new market stalls and kiosks at Utica Street Metro station
This plan has identified spaces outside the Utica Street Metro station that would be ideal as sites for market stalls for the selling of daily conveniences, morning coffee or farmer's goods. Especially in summer months, these market stalls could attract more life and vitality to a very key corner, in addition to encouraging transit use. The Utica station would be a testing ground for the implementation of kiosks and market stalls at other Metro stations.
Concentrate publicly-assisted renovation efforts at key properties on block between Main and Michigan
The great body of architecture on East Utica Street should be a special target for low interest loans and grants meant to assist renovation efforts. On this particular stretch, it will be even more vitally important to respect National Register of Historic Places guidelines for historic preservation.
Michigan Avenue
Observations, Conditions, Opportunities
Michigan Avenue is like so many mixed-use corridors in the East Side, connected to struggling but viable residential areas but itself a monument to a deluge of suburban sprawl and planned shrinkage, with its legacy of abandoned lots where a cohesive built fabric has been reduced to rubble. Perhaps more affected by them than any other street in Midtown, Michigan Avenue is overwhelmed by vacant parcels, each once occupied with thriving neighborhood stores or viable residential properties. In some instances, entire blocks, like the expanse of Michigan between Riley and Laurel, have not a single building left on them.
Now dubbed Harriet Tubman Way to recognize the city's importance as a key stop on the Underground Railroad, Michigan Avenue falls short on reflecting the importance of its contribution to history, and in only a few, incredibly vital instances are opportunities remaining for adaptive reuse projects capable of elevating the prospects of the neighborhood. Still a key corridor for automobile traffic, also a secondary corridor for bus traffic represented by the #111 line, Michigan is a meeting point for Midtown, its one true prospect in pulling investment further inward from Main Street and the West Side. Its importance is paramount.
Michigan Avenue visually signifies a 75-year process of decline precipitated by the scattering of its German residents beginning in the 1920s, and more dramatically in the 1960s. Michigan is not only a product of white, predominantly German flight, now a distant memory, but African American flight as well. Residents document a more recent abandonment of residences that had been the homes of middle class black families in some cases for fifty years or more, many leaving in increasing stages to neighborhoods more distant from downtown. The upper Michigan Avenue corridor had been a choice neighborhood of relocation for middle class, often well-established African American families in the 1950s and 60s, in many cases moving from the city's Ellicott District following its demolition in the 1960s. Michigan Avenue was advantaged by the presence of dedicated homeowners and committed tenants who kept the street going for many years. Only in the early 1990s did Michigan Avenue begin to seriously unravel.
For reasons similar to other areas of the city, abandonment has been accelerated in commercial corridors where neighborhood stores have been unable to compete, have gone out of business, and have had their former buildings demolished, contributing to a climate of disinvestment that has affected every nearby property. The image of decline on Michigan Avenue thus speaks more to the vulnerability of neighborhood retail than to the general health of Midtown's residential streets, many of which display remarkable resilience. Michigan Avenue, with its short blocks and resultant proximity to residents along Midtown's sidestreets, represents the possibility of planting new amenities that can invigorate the residential base. It is a vital sinew in the organism of the neighborhood.
In its current state, however, Michigan Avenue can only be a visage of things to come for areas nearby. The worst case scenario is that it continue to become a venue for suburban tract housing; the best is that it is reclaimed for development consistent with the block's historic purpose of bringing people together in the sphere of public life. Only an urban design formula embracing mixed uses and compact, intimate development can resurrect Michigan Avenue as a meeting place.
In only a superficial way, recent rebuilding efforts on Michigan Avenue have improved the street's appearance, if nothing else. However ephemeral these improvements may be, the suburban-style residential development built on Michigan since the early-1990s have given the street a fresher appearance than some other commercial corridors of the East Side. The trend speaks more to the convenience of building on large lots than it does a sensible planning policy that reinforces densities and a walkable scale.
Certainly, some of the housing blocks represent praiseworthy attempts at following the predominant design of historic homes in Midtown -- 1254, 1268 and 1274 Michigan are examples -- but they still fall short on so many other things. As is plainly obvious by the addresses of the three aforementioned houses, they are separated from each other by great distances, located on huge lots that could have held as many as ten houses, not merely three. The surrender of the urban fabric to new, sometimes well designed, houses on massive yards signifies a policy that has basically given up hope on the neighborhood's resurrection as an urban place. It confirms an unstated belief, despite the nearby existence of a major transit corridor, that Midtown cannot sustain urban densities and thus urban vitalities and liveliness. 1254, 1268 and 1274 are epitaphs, not merely addresses, signifying the assisted suicide of the old urban fabric.
This is not to say that all the urban fabric of Michigan Avenue has disappeared or been replaced. Vital remnants of Michigan Avenue's historic streetscape remain, some in very good states of upkeep but mostly in a state of jeopardy, its future existence uncertain. Two key groupings of commercial structures represent the finest opportunities for neighborhood retail creation in all of Midtown. Both are currently vacant and at risk for demolition. 1178 Michigan contains two storefronts in a solid brick masonry structure, ostensibly vacant though under the stewardship of the Beulah Church and Home of Christ's Saints. 1188 Michigan, next door, is particularly interesting as an innovation in the urban environment, a converted house with a very narrow attached retail space, perhaps no more than seven feet wide, perfect for a beauty salon or microenterprise. The two buildings hold together a corner (with Dodge) in a troubled part of Midtown, their survival paramount in efforts not only to shore up these areas but to provide venues for local entrepreneurship in low-rent spaces. The other grouping at 1325 Michigan, on the corner with Riley, is a fabulous Italianate commercial structure with the potential to hold as many as three ground-floor businesses in addition to office or residential spaces above. 1325 has been abandoned for a decade or more, as residents report that one of the interior brick walls is collapsing. The building, however, is hardly unsalvageable. As a structure of probably 1880s vintage, it is certainly as important historically as it is important for potential entrepreneurship and community interaction. It also concludes a vital stretch of Riley Street from Main Street, a star line-up that includes St. Vincent's Convent, the Packard Building, 65 Riley and a number of character houses. Its potential as a magnet, drawing pedestrian traffic further inward, is considerable.
There is one instance between Best and East Utica streets that provides evidence of the ability of homegrown businesses to sprout and thrive on such an undervalued street: Young's Texas Red Hots on 1233 Michigan. In a simple cinder-block structure, it represents how small, inexpensively built retail spaces can create lasting opportunities for entrepreneurship. Buildings like these are laboratories for experimenting with new business ideas, allowing people with a dollar and a dream the opportunity to start out in an inexpensive space. If more of these structures could be built in places like Midtown, with their low capitalization costs and affordable rents, neighborhoods would have an enhanced ability to foster vibrant local economies. In fact, it is questionable whether small business growth is even possible in cities without cheap incubation spaces like these.
The ability of enterprises like Young's Texas Red Hots to thrive, however, is still hampered by a policy that discourages residential densities and thus would reduce the number of potential customers that are within short enough walking distance to patronize the place. A long list of planning studies from around the country have documented that most people, even under the most ideal circumstances, are rarely willing to walk more than 800 feet to visit a corner store on a regular basis. If one does the math, this would add up to an extremely small number of potential customers where suburban land use formulas continue. The possibility of having more walkable retail businesses in Midtown would vanish entirely if that does in fact occur, especially in an area where car ownership is not terribly prevalent. Reclaiming Michigan Avenue as an urban, not a suburban, milieu will strengthen its ability to support neighborhood retail enterprises such as Young's Texas Red Hots, and would allow a few more like them to be established as well.
The remaining residential blocks of Michigan Avenue's historic environment include some residences of very good character and distinction. Probably the best of all of these is the block between Eaton and Riley, particularly on the west side of the street where a complete row of Queen Anne houses of mixed-upkeep remains. These houses, in particular, are interesting because they may actually be the only other houses in Buffalo developed by George Chadeayne, whose houses on Coe Place are singular throughout the city. (A few of the homes around the corner on Riley are also part of this collection.) Houses in this stretch like 1292 Michigan, which has an Order to Vacate Notice located on its front door, are vital elements of an intriguing urbanscape. Allowing even one of them to be sacrificed for demolition will undermine the value of the block as a unified whole.
Recommendations, Strategies, Suggested Improvements
Stabilize historic housing stock
The double and single family homes of Michigan Avenue between Best and East Utica streets represent a body of residential structures of mixed upkeep whose restoration could rescue this vital stretch from creeping suburbanization. Despite what seems to have been an aggressive housing construction effort since the early 1990s, more than half of the houses on the block are still part of the original built landscape. It would be unwise, except in only a few rare circumstances, to allow any more of them to be demolished. Especially along those special stretches, such as between Eaton and Riley streets, where almost a complete streetwall is preserved, it will be vital to provide modest public assistance to encourage renovation efforts and prove to residents the city's commitment to protect the original neighborhood. Where a body of residential buildings still exist in a cohesive landscape, it will be wise to target home improvement loans and grants to stabilize key blocks and establish a framework for the rehabilitation of nearby sidestreets. As a gateway through Midtown, Michigan Avenue does more to visually signify the condition of the neighborhood writ large, and will remain a symbol of its future potential. Ultimately, this plan is rooted in a belief that the street's old cottages and charming doubles will make the neighborhood more marketable, in the long-term, than the cookie-cutter homes so widely available in the suburbs.
Repair damaged streetscape
The sidewalk conditions of Michigan Avenue are a study in contrasts. In front of new suburban homes, perfectly maintained sidewalks lead into completely unwalkable, virtually nonexistent sidewalks fronting abandoned lots. Rendering the perfectly maintained sidewalks useless, merely a form of decor for the lawns of new tract houses, this dramatic ebb and flow in sidewalk upkeep ignores their fundamental purpose of allowing pedestrian traffic to flow smoothly down an entire street. On Michigan Avenue the sidewalk has become merely a private amenity, making new houses look neat and clean compared to their neighbors, and they have lost their public, shared quality. The sidewalks must be repaired, their function resurrected as a conduit for pedestrian traffic, not mere lawn beautification.
Commit to new planting initiative
Michigan Avenue's green infrastructure is sorely lacking. Providing the enclosure of a tree canopy will be crucial not only in calming traffic and providing beauty, but to mitigate against the visual impact of the wide expanse of vacant lots on the street. As long as the vacant lot problem persists for many more years, a likely scenario, the planting initiative would serve short-term, interim needs in addition to the more obvious long-term ones. From Best to East Utica streets, at least 59 new plantings will be required. Since Michigan Avenue is important as an automotive corridor, the scene enjoyed in large part from car windows, drivers speeding by may find a consistent row of trees of the same species a more visually appealing and orderly arrangement than the multispecies strategy advocated for residential sidestreets.
Purchase and renovate key commercial structures for new small business development
Michigan Avenue is most important as a place for bringing people in the neighborhood together in everyday activities, like visiting the corner grocery, that strengthen the spirit of the neighborhood as a distinctive and worthwhile place. Walkable, locally owned stores do more than anything else in establishing a neighborhood's sense of place and identity. 1325 Michigan is the most important of three extant retail structures left standing on the street, existing along a key pedestrian corridor with Riley. It was long the home of Joseph Denzel's Tavern, a popular watering hole of the old German neighborhood. 1184 and 1188 are less architecturally distinctive but equally important for anchoring new businesses on the other portion of Michigan to the south. Both groupings of commercial structures can be revitalized if the City steps forward to do the renovations themselves, restoring to the neighborhood some sense of its former activity.
Install comfortable benches at bus stops
As part of a policy that encourages transit use as well as enhances the streetscape, bus stops at the corners of Michigan Avenue with East Utica, Riley and Best streets should be complemented with comfortable, attractive benches.
Plant key landscape improvements along vacant corner lots
What is most noticeable along the many vacant lots of Michigan Avenue is how some have become de facto public spaces already, serving as informal pedestrian passageways from streets leading onto Michigan Avenue. These lots, many City owned, can become formalized pedestrian linkages. A demonstration project could be implemented on a City-owned corner lot, like 1200 Michigan at the intersection with Dodge, where an existing desire path can be paved with decorative stonework and surrounded by a few basic tree plantings. In the future, these easy-to-maintain improvements could be implemented at other corner lots along Michigan Avenue