Aerial Views of Buffalo and Suburban Neighborhoods
Old Photo Album- Fall 2022
All Images from Western New York Heritage Collection.
Many of us are fascinated by photos of streetscapes, buildings and other vistas from decades or even centuries past. Stepping back in time to view a block or a neighborhood or even a single structure (or the field where there is one now) can evoke a sense of nostalgia as well as being an instructive experience.
For the most part, photos of nearly a century or more ago are usually limited to ground-based perspectives. But as the popularity of aviation increased in the years following World War I (not to mention the availability of large numbers of surplus aircraft—many of them Curtiss “Jennies” built in Buffalo!), more and more photographers took to the sky to record the streets and buildings around them as they had never been seen before.
Western New York was no different, and, during the mid-1920s, a series of large, aerial photos appeared in the Sunday gravure sections of local newspapers like The Buffalo Sunday Times and the Buffalo Courier. The following sampling of some of those images provides less-than-familiar glimpses of familiar neighborhoods in Buffalo and the surrounding area. See how many details you can discover!
Can you believe this photo shows Main Street at its intersection with University Ave. and a tree-lined Niagara Falls Blvd? The beginnings of UB’s South Campus (formerly the Erie County Almshouse) are visible at upper right.
Moving southwest, this photo shows the intersection of Front Avenue with Niagara Street. The Erie Canal is seen at lower left, while the old City Waterworks and Terminal B of the Buffalo General Electric Company are in the foreground just beyond the canal.
Finally, we move north for this aerial view of the Tonawandas, looking north. The Niagara River, along with Tonawanda Island and, just below, the Tonawanda Board & Paper Company, are visible at left. Tonawanda Creek runs across the center of the photo, with the Herschel Spillman Company factory on the north side, just right of center, about the time of its sale to Remington Rand.
