Why America's Richest City Was Abandoned by the Wealthy: Buffalo, NY

In 1901, Buffalo lit up the world. Power from Niagara Falls made it the City of Light, its Pan-American Exposition drew the president of the United States, and along Delaware Avenue the families who had grown rich on grain, railroads, lumber, soap, banking and steel lived in mansions designed by the greatest architects in America. Within fifty years many of those families had left the avenue, their houses were being torn down or taken over by institutions, and a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece was sold for 5,000 dollars and demolished for a truck stop that was never built on the site. This in-depth, full-length documentary traces the rise and fall of Buffalo, New York, one of the wealthiest cities of the Gilded Age, and asks how a city that once ranked among the largest in America lost its industries, its old money and more than half of its people. --------------------- Gain FREE access to secret full-length documentaries on wealthy families "too scandalous for YouTube" by joining our newsletter: https://www.substack.com/@oldmoneyluxury --------------------- TIMESTAMPS: Introduction The Gateway to the West Millionaires' Row The City of Light The Larkin Empire The Exodus The Fall of Steel Buffalo Today --------------------- We open in the summer of 1901, when the Pan-American Exposition filled 350 acres on the edge of Delaware Park, electric light from Niagara Falls turned Buffalo into the City of Light, and the city ranked eighth in America with 352,387 residents. We trace the gateway to the west. On October 26, 1825, the Erie Canal opened with Buffalo, then home to about 2,400 people, at its western end. In 1843 the merchant Joseph Dart and the engineer Robert Dunbar opened the world's first steam-powered grain elevator, and Buffalo grew into a great grain port and railroad hub where Midwestern harvests met the road to New York. We walk down Millionaires' Row. Around the turn of the century Delaware Avenue became Buffalo's most prestigious address, home to bankers, lumber barons, railroad men and industrialists. McKim, Mead and White, Carrere and Hastings and E. B. Green designed their houses, including mansions for the Goodyears, the Williamses and the Knoxes, while Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux gave the city a system of parks and parkways. We follow the City of Light at its peak and its darkest moment. On September 6, 1901, President William McKinley was shot at the Exposition and died eight days later, and Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in as president at the Ansley Wilcox Mansion. We explore the Larkin empire. John D. Larkin founded his soap company in 1875, and by the 1910s it had 21 buildings, more than 600 products and about 10,000 mail orders a day. His executive Darwin D. Martin brought Frank Lloyd Wright to Buffalo, and Wright's Larkin Administration Building opened in 1906. We follow the exodus. Over time, local firms fell under distant ownership, with Bethlehem Steel buying Lackawanna Steel in 1922 and Curtiss-Wright moving in the 1940s. After the Second World War more and more families moved away from Delaware Avenue, and the mansions they left behind were demolished, divided into apartments or taken over by institutions. The Frank H. Goodyear house was demolished, and the Larkin building, abandoned after 1944 and seized for back taxes, was sold for 5,000 dollars and torn down in 1950. The critic Paul Goldberger later called it one of the great losses in the history of American architecture. We trace the fall of steel. In 1950 Buffalo had 580,132 residents and about 80 per cent of local jobs were in manufacturing. The St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 and allowed ships to bypass the city, the region lost at least 70,000 jobs between 1970 and 1984, and in 1983 Bethlehem Steel closed its Lackawanna plant, which had once employed 20,000 people. And we close on Buffalo today. By 2010 the city had lost more than half its peak population, but Larkinville, the waterfront and new industries brought fresh investment, and the 2020 census recorded the first population gain in 70 years. Many of the great houses of Delaware Avenue still stand, cared for by companies, schools and charities rather than the families who built them. Buffalo is often said to have had more millionaires per capita than any city in America. Local historians have found no evidence for that claim, but the wealth was real, and so was its disappearance. Was Buffalo abandoned by its wealthy families, or did the forces that made them rich simply move somewhere else?