Once upon a time there was an active, magnificent train station called Buffalo Central Terminal which served tens of thousands of people per day and more than 200 daily trains at its peak. It housed hundreds of employees for the New York Central Railroad Co., one of America's largest companies, in a landmark 17-story tower above the terminal, as well as in adjoining buildings.

 

But there was a problem -- several, actually. The station was built where the railroad needed it, not where the public wanted it. It was built at the junction of railroad lines that allowed easy access for trains. But it was two miles east of downtown Buffalo in a working-class Polish neighborhood. And since local mobsters controlled taxi cab companies, they kept a proposed streetcar line from being built into the station making it less accessible. And, worst of all, the station opened on June 22, 1929, four months before the stock market crash and the start of the Great Depression. The massive, ornate and very expensive Buffalo Central Terminal would never reach its full potential.

 

Just 30 years later, as governments built airports and highway and rail passenger traffic went into a severe decline, New York Central began closing sections of the terminal to save money. NYC merged with its rival Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, went bankrupt several years later, and absorbed into government-owned Conrail in 1976. Amtrak took over passenger operations in 1971 and relocated its eight daily trains to/from Buffalo in 1979 to the old but cozy Exchange Street station downtown and the new and suburban station in Depew. By the early 1980s, there was nothing left at Buffalo Central Terminal but vagrants, vandals and memories....

 

Halloween 2009 was a fitting day for a tour of the ruins of Central Terminal by a nonprofit group seeking to restore it. I was happy to be part of the small tour. Thanks to Bruce Becker, President of the Empire State Passengers Association for arranging the tour and to Mark Lewandowski, president of the Central Terminal Restoration Corp. for accommodating us. Lewandowski grew up next to the station in the neighborhood that has also fallen on hard times.

 

Here's where the station is located...

 

June 22, 1929 was grand opening day. On that day, the station awaited its first train. By the next day, more than 200 trains would have called on the station...

 

In the late 1940s the station, its track area, support facilities and surrounding neighborhood were all still intact when this aerial view was taken...

 

In 1944, a New York Central passenger train heads west out of the station bound for Cleveland, Toledo and Chicago...

 

But scenes like this one during World War II wouldn't last for much more than another 20 years...

 

 

And now to today.....

 

 

Coming up the driveway from Curtiss Street, this is the view I was confronted with...

 

We are surrounded by ruins...

 

 

They are trying to save the station and have made some progress over the past decade. But there is hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work left to do...

 

And so we enter the station...

 

 

 

 

 

This space formerly held a swanky restaurant. You can still see some of the fancy detailing on the wall. But now it is accompanied by graffitti. This space is used for meetings and functions...

 

 

From this location, you would have walked out....

 

....to this concourse over the tracks. But the concourse was severed in 1982 from the station I'm standing inside by Conrail which needed the overhead clearance for its larger freight trains...

 

 

 

One of the persons accompanying us was an aging volunteer from the Empire State Passengers Association. He was in his 70s, a frequent user of this station decades ago, and often stopped to look quietly at certain things like this wrecked passenger services counter. Only he knows the personal memories such scenes triggered....

 

Then we went upstairs (the elevators are long gone) to the New York Central offices above the station. Some of the offices had views of the station concourses, but only after the frosted glass windows had been broken out by vandals over the past 30 years. Apparently New York Central used frosted glass because it didn't want its employees distracted by sights of the hustle and bustle of its own station...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are the archaeological remains of New York Central's train dispatching center inside Central Terminal. It controlled the busy mainline tracks west of Syracuse to Niagara Falls. But this was all relocated to a modern dispatching center at Selkirk Yard near Albany. One of our tour companions checks out one of three consoles...

 

That isn't snow on the floor next to the cold radiator -- it's dust...

 

Amazingly, the site owners have already hauled away more 300 tons of debris left by Conrail when they abandoned the facility in the early 1980s. But there are still many offices in the tower that look like this...

 

And so our small tour group asked some final questions of our guide moments before thanking him and saying goodbye...

 

But just to show that all is not desolate rail-wise in Buffalo, we headed east to Amtrak's Depew Station. On the way, we passed a CSX freight train getting ready to depart Frontier Yard...

 

The CSX freight caught up to us at Depew, as we held on to our hats and hairpieces on a VERY windy day. Some gusts easily exceeded 50 mph. But the freight train was moving at only about 30 mph...

 

 

 

 

 

I'm taking this a bit out of order, but I wanted to end with photographs of a passenger train. When we first arrived in Buffalo to meet our New York friends, we met at Amtrak's Exchange Street station downtown. Minutes after our arrival, Amtrak's "Maple Leaf" from Toronto heading for New York City pulled into this lesser used of Buffalo's two stations...

 

A few passengers got off and about a dozen got on board. At Depew, dozens more boarded for the dash to the Big Apple...

 

Even after we left Buffalo on that Halloween and headed west along Lake Erie's southern shore, our thoughts were still with the station whose ghostly chambers rattled and echoed with the sounds of the wind gusts and nothing else. It left a hollow, empty feeling that haunted us all the way back to Cleveland...

Beautiful.

That is a gorgeous building. 

Would air travel be as popular as it is if airports where as threadbare as today's typical Amtrak whistle stop? Greyhound stations are better than many Amtrak stations! 

Sad.

Beautiful building... I remember going past it on the Lake Shore Limited a few years ago and thinking how sad it looked. At least it seems to be in much better condition than Detroit's Michigan Central Station.

Would air travel be as popular as it is if airports where as threadbare as today's typical Amtrak whistle stop? Greyhound stations are better than many Amtrak stations! 

 

Would airports be as attractive and amenity-rich as they are if the airlines had to pay anything near the operating costs they incur, or if the massive quantities of tax-dollars spent on them were subject to as much howling criticism as passenger rail's pittance?

 

Buffalo Central Terminal's grand concourse looks much better than it did in earlier photos I saw of it, full of trash and litter. Those folks certainly have cleaned it up.

Amtrak is a dependable whipping-boy for Wayne Allyn Root and other libertarians who are frequent talk radio guests. Never -- NEVER -- are the political motivations for the system's notorious money-losing routes even mentioned.  The service -- or lack thereof -- is never discussed in any detail. Meanwhile, we get weekly updates on CVG's woes by an "aviation expert" on 700WLW, but there is *never* any criticism levied at the third $250 million north-south runway completed around 2005, almost to the day when Delta started abandoning its hub. 

Same thing happened in St. Louis where a new $2 billion runway was completed (they demolished 2,000 homes in the process) just in time for a massive cutback by American Airlines. The runway is little used and is considered too far to taxi to by the airlines.

 

Back to BCT. The facility, grand and imposing as it is, is a monument to managerial shortsightedness. NYC built the station to satisfy operational needs, not public convenience and was terribly overbuilt. When one considers the number of huge stations on that railroad at Detroit, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Buffalo, it's no wonder they lost money!

 

BTW, NYC had a coal mine that supplied BCT and another station. BCT burned coal at the rate of 4 tons an hour!!! The waiting room ceiling is 58 feet from the floor, a huge space to heat.

 

The location and neighborhood is poor and I doubt BCT would ever be used for its original purpose.

 

I think the issue is that mainstream media just doesn't understand rail issues at all. At times, it seems like a discussion that can't even take place since so many people are clueless about how things are funded in the United States (or are too biased to see an alternative). I mean the average KJP thread on Urban Ohio is better than anything you'd get in mainstream media.

 

I agree with that statement. Our local media people, especially in televison, learned everything they want to know about railroading by watching a couple episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine.

  "It was built at the junction of railroad lines that allowed easy access for trains. But it was two miles east of downtown..."

 

  Sounds like Cincinnati. Oh, wait, the two terminals were designed by the same firm.

 

  In the 1920's, the railroads were already starting to lose passenger traffic, yet they invested in a lot of passenger rail infrastructure anyway.

 

  Kind of like the airlines are doing today.

Not true. Railroads saw their market share peak in 1929, but their total ridership peaked in 1944. But it is true that the interurbans were on the decline after about 1922 (I forget the exact year). By 1930, most were gone.

One has to wonder how different our country would look today if it weren't for World War II. Europe's infrastructure was destroyed, so they had no choice but to rebuild. We chose to destroy our own infrastructure and then rebuild it to suit the needs of General Motors and Standard Oil.

One has to wonder how different our country would look today if it weren't for World War II. Europe's infrastructure was destroyed, so they had no choice but to rebuild. We chose to destroy our own infrastructure and then rebuild it to suit the needs of General Motors and Standard Oil.

 

Well Americans love the ability to go where they want to, when they want to.  It's going to be tough to ever change that way of living.  More so than cars, I think it's airlines that are doing the job railroads should be doing today.

Everyone loves mobility, and having good passenger rail service offers freedom of choice for people of means, and outright freedom of movement for people who cannot afford cars, cannot physically drive or want to live in urban settings where having a car is a pain in the ass.

 

But why has this thread turned to this discussion? Discuss Buffalo's station, its architecture, its location, its prospects for redevelopment (residential? retail? special events?) or if it should ever have passenger rail service again as is espoused by the facility's owners....

 

http://buffalocentralterminal.org/

Buffalo Central Terminal seems similar to Michigan Central Station in Detroit, being a massive building in an odd location two miles from downtown.  Cincinnati's Union Terminal almost suffered a similar fate, and could be looked at as a case study for successful renovation.  It's also two miles from downtown, in an odd location, and probably only kept it's rail service (3 trains per week I think) because the Museum Center is there.  Before it was the museum, it had a short stint as a failed retail complex... something that should also be taken into consideration before any moves are made at Buffalo. 

Perhaps photos like these wouldn't depress me as much if we were still capable of creating buildings the way we used to.  I really don't think we are anymore.

I love the Central Terminal just for what it is as well as for its metaphorical value. When it was at its worst, it symbolized a city that had reached a nadir. Now, as it gradually claws its way back to life, it symbolizes a city that I have good reason to hope is doing the same.

 

It's hard to know what could ultimately happen at the terminal, but I don't see why it would not be suited for passenger service for at least one of its functions, and it has proved popular as a location for large public gatherings. The views from the upper floors would be interesting, I'm sure, whether toward the surreal and flat landscape of Buffalo itself and the waters beyond or toward the beautiful hilly countryside that fans out beyond the city from southwest to east.

 

The neighborhood around the terminal is in rough condition, but, on the other hand, Buffalo has had success with off-downtown office development in the Larkin District, and the tower would be a great candidate for residential use if it were downtown or in one of many other neighborhoods. I'd love to see an East Side extension of the Metro Rail line that could pass through Larkin and by the Central Terminal on its way out to the airport or wherever.

^ thank you for that. i was just wondering if it could be reincorporated into local transit or put to any other use.

 

 

I think the issue is that mainstream media just doesn't understand rail issues at all. At times, it seems like a discussion that can't even take place since so many people are clueless about how things are funded in the United States (or are too biased to see an alternative). I mean the average KJP thread on Urban Ohio is better than anything you'd get in mainstream media.

 

I agree with that statement. Our local media people, especially in televison, learned everything they want to know about railroading by watching a couple episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine.

 

i'm afraid i'm more cynical. yes there is a lack of understanding by mainstream media and thats a biggie. however, even tho big auto is in decline there are probably still a few other lobbies around that also strive to keep us in the dark re the benefits of rail service, such as road construction firms and the like. thankfully perceptions are changing.

 

Fantastic location. I have the opportunity to travel up there this winter to document the preservation of the terminal... I can't wait!

Well they certainly cleaned house.  I mean there's electricity now it appears.  Thanks for the photos!

It's not always an empty station. This is their latest Dyngus Day festivities. The station is in a former Polish neighborhood....

 

Well they certainly cleaned house.  I mean there's electricity now it appears.  Thanks for the photos!

 

Not much for plumbing though.  The Dyngus Day relief is found OUTSIDE the building in a fenced in Port-O-Let compound.  It gets ugly late at night....

I had the honor of being one of the first to participate in the Central Terminal's Photographers Day last month, for $100 I could take all the pictures I wanted with my tripod and explore the building (except the tower due to Peregrine Falcons being up there). Well worth it! It's an awesome building despite its derelict condition.

They're charging now? Well I got they to raise money somehow......

They charge $10 per historic and guided tour (no professional photography). $20 for tower tours. The tour I was in was a special photographer's event @ $100, I was more than happy to pay for that. Interestingly enough, I think of the 15 people that were part of the tour, 12 were Canadians.

A new future for Buffalo Central Terminal?

 

Read about it and discuss it at:

http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,6079.msg719937.html#msg719937

Buffalo Central Terminal was heralded as one of the premier examples of railroad art deco architecture when it was built in 1929

 

http://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/07/04/priority-buffalo-central-terminal-heralded-one-premier-examples-railroad-art-deco-architecture-built-1929/

Wandered around the old passenger platform and whatnot here's an album of the pics: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAh2ry

 

There's fencing up around the main building - from what I can gather they're restoring at least the lobby.

 

A couple highlights:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Such a beautiful old building.  I was rooting for the Bills to site their stadium here and rehab this terminal as a part of a football village.  Alas they are going to stay in the burbs out in Orchard Park.  

Magnificent.  Reminds me of the one in Detroit as well.  Too bad Buffalo doesn’t have a Ford or GM to pump the renovation dollars into it that it deserves.  Agree with it being in a bad location too…not a bad neighborhood but just not central enough.

32 minutes ago, BigMacky said:

Magnificent.  Reminds me of the one in Detroit as well.  Too bad Buffalo doesn’t have a Ford or GM to pump the renovation dollars into it that it deserves.  Agree with it being in a bad location too…not a bad neighborhood but just not central enough.

Going through Buffalo a few months back made me think how majestic the city was back in its heyday that is no longer. 

There was certainly a lot of old money in Buffalo over the years that helped it continue to punch above its weight for a couple generations, but it seems like that those families have either sold out or moved on over the last 30 years. Buffalo is starting to find its way again, but it will be s shell of its former glory 

39 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

Going through Buffalo a few months back made me think how majestic the city was back in its heyday that is no longer. 

There was certainly a lot of old money in Buffalo over the years that helped it continue to punch above its weight for a couple generations, but it seems like that those families have either sold out or moved on over the last 30 years. Buffalo is starting to find its way again, but it will be s shell of its former glory 

Actually Buffalo is way further along than Cleveland.  

 

My list of reasons:
 

Buffalo is smaller and the white flight not as extreme 

 

Buffalo identifies as east coast, and is *slightly* less segregated than midwestern cities in Ohio.   

 

Buffalo's corporate community is EXTREMELY involved in the city.   There is barely any event in Buffalo that doesn't have some kind of major corporate backing.    

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

Actually Buffalo is way further along than Cleveland.  

 

My list of reasons:
 

3 minutes ago, Cleburger said:

Buffalo identifies as east coast, and is *slightly* less segregated than midwestern cities in Ohio.

 

Buffalo identifies as east coast, and is *slightly* less segregated than midwestern cities in Ohio.   

 

Buffalo's corporate community is EXTREMELY involved in the city.   There is barely any event in Buffalo that doesn't have some kind of major corporate backing.    

 

 

 

That is true, Buffalo's business community is a lot more vested than many other cities and they have always punched above their weight. However, unfortunately, that weight has become a lot lighter than it was 30 years ago. 

 

As to Buffalo identifying as East Coast. That may be true, but that they have been hurt by a lot of the policies in New York designed to cater to Wall Street or even taxation policies designed to hit wealthy Manhattenites who work on or are affiliated with Wall Street. While in the same state NYC is a completely different animal than Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghampton and many of the policies geared toward NYC have really harmed some of those older industrial cities in Western New York. 

 

 

Relevant to the discussion - they've done a really cool job on their industrial area - they've got an area called Riverworks - and while it's not anything crazy it's a neat reuse of former industrial land. They pretty much created a whole ecosystem around the grain silos in the area - two ice rinks, rock climbing, bars, a small dock for what looks like a ferry, etc. 

 

 

 

I would like to point out that the City and Metro Buffalo grew from 2010-2020 at 6.5% and 2.8% respectively.  That is, dare I say, excellent for a "rustbelt" city.

Buffalo and the other cities of upstate NY are not as beatdown as people in other places seem to think. Another part of the narrative--that upstate cities are mere vassals of New York City--is also untrue, though the benefits of being in a state that includes New York City and only some of its more conservative suburbs cannot be overstated. For one, the upstate cities do not bear the burden of being in a red state. They also benefit from their proximity to the riches of the Mixedwood Plains: Buffalo is 90 minutes from Toronto, and Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany are three hours, respectively, from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. 

20 hours ago, GISguy said:

Relevant to the discussion - they've done a really cool job on their industrial area - they've got an area called Riverworks - and while it's not anything crazy it's a neat reuse of former industrial land. They pretty much created a whole ecosystem around the grain silos in the area - two ice rinks, rock climbing, bars, a small dock for what looks like a ferry, etc. 

 

 

 

It is a cool place, I was there this summer. Would hate to be there in the winter though. Spending all day outside in January for a hockey tourney is not my idea of fun there. Now, in August, it is beautiful and has great views of the river.  It is a cool area, but the big detriment to it is that it does not connect well with the city and I feel it needs a little more food/or other attractions there. 

It is cool what they have done with it, considering it was just a wasted hulk of industrial buildings prior to this. I also love how LaBatt's painted the old Silos to look like beer cans. 

On 11/29/2022 at 12:01 PM, Brutus_buckeye said:

It is a cool place, I was there this summer. Would hate to be there in the winter though. Spending all day outside in January for a hockey tourney is not my idea of fun there. Now, in August, it is beautiful and has great views of the river.  It is a cool area, but the big detriment to it is that it does not connect well with the city and I feel it needs a little more food/or other attractions there. 

It is cool what they have done with it, considering it was just a wasted hulk of industrial buildings prior to this. I also love how LaBatt's painted the old Silos to look like beer cans. 

 

I was wondering what they do when the winds are ripping and roaring - tennis style windguards? I walked over from the Cobblestone side and you're right, it's definitely isolated but it seems like it's spurring some development in the immediate area. When I was walking through the parking lot to the rinks I honestly thought people thought I was breaking into cars or something lol I don't think many people walk over there. It's a cool reuse though, I need to go back earlier in the day maybe get an open skate in for the full experience. Open skate there and then walk over and open skate at Canalside which has turned out to be a GREAT use of the riverfront.

16 minutes ago, GISguy said:

 

I was wondering what they do when the winds are ripping and roaring - tennis style windguards? I walked over from the Cobblestone side and you're right, it's definitely isolated but it seems like it's spurring some development in the immediate area. When I was walking through the parking lot to the rinks I honestly thought people thought I was breaking into cars or something lol I don't think many people walk over there. It's a cool reuse though, I need to go back earlier in the day maybe get an open skate in for the full experience. Open skate there and then walk over and open skate at Canalside which has turned out to be a GREAT use of the riverfront.

It was interesting in your photo that everyone was sitting on the inside and not in the bleachers? Was that because it was raining/snowing outside when you were there? The metal bleachers look way too cold on a day like that. At least it would have made sense if they could put some type of tarp up to block the wind that they can remove when needed. I guess they are more used to it up there though. 

2 minutes ago, Brutus_buckeye said:

It was interesting in your photo that everyone was sitting on the inside and not in the bleachers? Was that because it was raining/snowing outside when you were there? The metal bleachers look way too cold on a day like that. At least it would have made sense if they could put some type of tarp up to block the wind that they can remove when needed. I guess they are more used to it up there though. 

 

That specific rink was getting hit by wind pretty hard, I'd imagine that played into it. They also didn't have the overhead heat on so I'm sure that played into it too. I grew up in WNY/in a hockey family and the experience would probably outweigh any crap conditions. We traveled to some pretty crappy barns over the years lol.

9 minutes ago, GISguy said:

 

That specific rink was getting hit by wind pretty hard, I'd imagine that played into it. They also didn't have the overhead heat on so I'm sure that played into it too. I grew up in WNY/in a hockey family and the experience would probably outweigh any crap conditions. We traveled to some pretty crappy barns over the years lol.

We were up there in August because they had the kids american Ninja world championship there. It was such a cool place for the event and it was a phenomenal August day in the upper 70s. The views were great and looking out over the city was cool too. I just knew I would not want to be there in January when it was below 0 up there. It has a bit of an urban brewery vibe to it but really more of a hockey arena. I can see where the outdoor vibe would play well up there though. 

On 11/28/2022 at 2:46 PM, Brutus_buckeye said:

That is true, Buffalo's business community is a lot more vested than many other cities and they have always punched above their weight. However, unfortunately, that weight has become a lot lighter than it was 30 years ago. 

 

As to Buffalo identifying as East Coast. That may be true, but that they have been hurt by a lot of the policies in New York designed to cater to Wall Street or even taxation policies designed to hit wealthy Manhattenites who work on or are affiliated with Wall Street. While in the same state NYC is a completely different animal than Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghampton and many of the policies geared toward NYC have really harmed some of those older industrial cities in Western New York. 

 

 

 

 

except actually its other way around -- where would upstate nys be without nyc and the tri-state loot? 

 

keep in mind in state metro nyc area is at least 62% of the nys population (more if you factor in visitors and muh illegals) and 70 percent of the income tax that the state collects comes from this in state part of the nyc metro of westchester, nassau, suffolk and nyc (nyc itself is 40%). and more when you factor in the out of state tri-state commuters.

 

some of that money train goes upstate, but none comes down -- so you could say the nyc metro as it is today is dragged down by upstate much more than upstate is harmed.

 

not to mention recently nys gov hochul, a buffaloer through and through, tossed buffalo a bone of nys paying for 60% of the new football stadium to help keep the bills, even though its owned by a billionaire who hardly needs that kind of assistance (the pegula's are no busted modell moneywise, that is for sure). also, hochul just wrangled one of those trendy new high paying biden computer chip factories for syracuse.

 

 

New York City's has more than 40 percent of the state's population, so it seems it should generate more than the 40 percent of the state's income tax that mrnyc ascribes to it.