Buffalo

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BUFFALO

BUFFALO. The city of Buffalo, New York, lies at the northeast end of Lake Erie where it flows into the Niagara River, and then into Lake Ontario. Because of its strategic position, Buffalo became a shipping and transportation hub in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Buffalo was established in 1804 as part of the speculative land development of the American West. In the War of 1812, it was seized and burned by British forces from Canada. Buffalo, as a gateway to the Great Lakes, was selected as the western terminus of the Erie Canal when it was constructed in the 1820s. With the opening of the canal in 1827, Buffalo became the storage and transshipment center for the flow of grains and raw material out of the American Midwest, and for the flow of manufactured goods into that burgeoning region.

By 1840, Buffalo's population had grown to 18,000, making it the largest city west of the Appalachians. The railroads arrived in the 1840s, enhancing Buffalo's role as a transportation center and gateway to the Midwest. By the mid-nineteenth century, the need for iron and steel for both ship construction and the railroads prompted the beginnings of heavy industry at Buffalo.

The combination of Lake Superior iron ore from the Mesabi Range in Minnesota and proximate coking coal from Pennsylvania, both cheaply moved by lake steamers, made Buffalo an ideal location for steel foundries and fabricators. By 1900, Buffalo was the second largest producer of steel in the country. With strong shipping, commercial, and industrial activity, Buffalo's financial and service sectors also expanded. This strong economic growth attracted waves of immigrants both from the American countryside and from Europe. These workers became increasingly militant, creating a strong union movement.

The twentieth century opened with bright prospects for further expansion of the heavily industrialized Buffalo, particularly with the opening of automobile factories and related industry. Indeed, the period during the two World Wars saw strong employment and prosperity in the city. But the Great Depression of the 1930s showed the fragility of industrial concentration, and the city of Buffalo defaulted on its debts and went bankrupt. Further, the rise of national corporations took local control away from Buffalo. Finally, with the opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1959, ships were able to move directly from the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean, and Buffalo's commercial and shipping activities contracted sharply. The attendant economic difficulties and labor unrest precipitated the flight of manufacturers, which further aggravated the decline of the Buffalo economy.

Buffalo's urban problems and "white flight" led to population declines from 530,000 in 1950 to barely 300,000 in the 1990s. New York State attempted to ease the city's social and economic difficulties by funding public work projects and rebuilding the State University of New York at Buffalo. At the end of the twentieth century, Buffalo—as part of the Great Lakes Rust Belt—continued to struggle with the decline of manufacturing urban centers throughout the American Midwest.