These were the passageways behind the mansions of Delaware Avenue, where stables housed horses and carriages were readied for transport.  They were unpaved paths to poorer dwellings, clogged with snow in winter; dusted with dirt and debris all summer.   They were shortcuts for busy workers; secret settings for both romantic couplings and criminal confrontations—or escape routes.  Alleyways were, and are, the perfect place to store, and pick through, garbage.  Conversely, they have also long piqued artistic imaginations, as quiet places where sun-dappled trellises hide secret gardens. 

In yellowed city directories, municipal archives of local government proceedings, earliest city maps and hand-colored fire insurance atlases, not to mention any one of more than half a dozen newspapers residents could peruse back in the day, one can piece together the history of some extant alleyways in Buffalo.  Over the years some names were changed, some have disappeared from the map, while other alleys remain.  Stroll with us down a selection of these veritable memory lanes.

Our first stop takes us downtown, between Swan and South Division streets, where Booth Alley connects Washington and Ellicott. The first record of this location appears on May 17, 1833; it was paved in 1855.   On November 16, l891, the path was discontinued from Oak to Ellicott.    Though this alleyway was also once a violent crime scene—a Buffalo Evening News story dated November 1, 1907, reported on a “Cabman Accused of Choking Womanfare” in Booth Alley—the passageway has had a more benevolent history as a popular shortcut between the Ellicott Square Building and the old Post Office on Ellicott (today’s Erie Community College).   In the 1930s, office workers protested its planned closing as downtown renovation progressed.  The workforce prevailed, according to a story in the Courier-Express on January 17, 1936, headlined: “Alley Choked by Debris of Building To Be Reopened.”  The account noted that “Buffalonians who enjoyed walking through the alley leading from the Washington Street entrance of Ellicott Square to Ellicott Street will be glad to know that the shortcut to the post office will be reopened when the demolition of the old Steel Building in Washington Street is completed.”   The “peculiar attraction” of this alley was also explained: “In bad weather, many went from Main Street through Ellicott Square to Washington Street, and then through the alley to the post office.  It was a rather adventurous trip, particularly with an umbrella, because one never knew how large the next truck would be that would decide to come through from the opposite direction.”  On rainy days, pedestrians dodging accumulating large puddles “looked like staggering drunks”.  Thirty-two years later, Booth Alley was featured in a romantic Porterfield photo essay in the January 27, 1968, issue of the Courter-Express, headlined thus: “Alleys may soon be a thing of the past.”  Booth Alley remains.

Running from Huron to Broadway, this alley appears in city records as of April 24, 1835, and was paved in 1887.  It was home to carriage makers and a livery or “hack stable” with horses for hire, as well as rooms for rent.  Belying its flowery name, this alley was also somewhat notorious as the scene of at least one gruesome crime. According to a November 4, 1885, report in The Buffalo Commercial: “A woman residing at 23 Blossom Alley was found dead in the house this morning with her throat cut ear to ear.  There were grave suspicions of foul play.”   The “estimable” landlady helpfully told police that the dead lady’s husband “is said to be a shiftless, drunken brute.”  Blossom Alley also featured in a later story in the same newspaper, dated March 5, 1896.   “She Was Wealthy,” read the understated headline.  A subhead told the story, “Blossom Alley Woman Who Used to Clean Offices and Was Supposed to be Poor Left a $30,000 Estate.”  Mrs. Sarah Donovan died February 23 in her rooms in Blossom Alley.  According to the paper, “…the peculiar woman had possessed more than meagre savings.  She had real estate valued at $25,000, and personal property valued at $5,000.”   After years of cleaning offices, the reporter opined, “Naturally she was believed to be poor,”  along with this nugget: “Her husband had not lived with her in 15 years.  He is supposed to be in the mining regions of Colorado.”  The story details the disbursements of her will, including $300 to be spent on a monument over her grave; $200 for Masses at St. Joseph’s Cathedral; $1,000 to St. Vincent’s Orphan Asylum; $1,000 and all of her jewelry to Jacob J. Stein, her friend and attorney, and “two trunks with the wearing apparel contained in them” to Daisy Fox.   Various nieces and nephews in Santiago, Chile, the children of her only sibling, a brother who predeceased her, were to share the residue of her estate after Mr. Stein sold her property.

Blossom Alley, perhaps in reaction to its notoriety, was slated for a name change to Storck Street, according to a note in the same issue of The Buffalo Commercial.  Sometimes the name changes happened, and sometimes—depending on the accuracy of municipal records and political exigencies—street names reverted back.  Today, it is known as “Blossom Street,” and can be found running behind Big Ditch Brewing Company and Ferguson Electric between Ellicott and Oak streets.

A relative latecomer compared to the previous entries, Burt Alley’s first municipal record appears in 1871.  Originally running from Pearl Street to Franklin, between Court and Genesee streets, and also known as Burt Avenue, it was named for Brig. Gen. David Burt, whose mansion on Niagara Square became Buffalo’s first high school, old Central.  Sadly, today’s summer stroller won’t be able to find this one, as it was obliterated with the construction of the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center.

Regarding its namesake, however, a piece that appeared in the November 13, l938, edition of the Courier-Express, part of a series on streets named for prominent Buffalonians, related the remarkable life of General Burt. A New England native who came to Buffalo in 1815, Burt opened a general store on Main Street, opposite the site of what later became the William Hengerer Company.  “Sooner or later, virtually every one of importance in the county was certain to drop in at that store, Millard Fillmore and Chief Redjacket [sic] went there,” wrote the reporter.

General Burt, who succeeded General Peter A. Porter as brigadier general of the 46th New York State Brigade, had an impressive resume of local leadership, first as a village trustee, later as a pension agent for veterans of the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Indian agent for Western New York, director of the United States Bank, the Commercial Bank, the Buffalo & Niagara Falls Railroad and member of the New York State legislature.  When Governor DeWitt Clinton, accompanied by several upstate leaders, made the first trip from Buffalo to New York City on the Erie Canal aboard the Seneca Chief in 1825, General Burt was in that august company.

In 1854, six years after his death, Burt’s widow sold the Niagara Square mansion to the city to house Buffalo’s first high school.  Old Central was succeeded by Hutchinson High School.

A commercial strip originally extending north and south from West Chippewa, between Franklin and Pearl streets, this location was first laid out in 1835 as “Ashbury Alley.”   An 1881 Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. map depicts rechristened Asbury Alley backing a “Bicycle School”, as well as liquor, wallpaper, hardware and tin shops.  It was used as a storage area for a carpet shop and furrier.  Though unconfirmed, the space was likely named for its proximity to the Asbury Methodist Episcopal Church, at the corner of Chippewa and Pearl, behind which the alley ran.  In 1916, the Asbury M.E. Church merged with the Delaware Methodist Episcopal Church (now Babeville) at the nearby corner of Delaware and Tupper. Following the merger, the Delaware Avenue congregation was renamed the Asbury Delaware Avenue Methodist Church. Today the alley dead ends just south of Chippewa and no longer extends to Huron.  

This passage, connecting Carolina and Virginia streets, between Niagara Street and Prospect Avenue, was paved in 1854. Another alley named for a prominent citizen, this one, according to the May 19, 1940 edition of the Courier-Express, for Dr. George Edward Fell, co-inventor of the electric chair with Buffalo dentist Dr. Alfred P. Southwick.  More salubriously, Dr. Fell was internationally renowned for his invention of the Fell motor, a machine for resuscitation which preceded the pulmotor.  He also developed a life preserver.    While attending medical school evenings, George Fell served as city engineer.  Assisted by his brother, Charles Frederick, he laid out one of the first local breakwalls from the harbor along the south shore of Lake Erie where the lighthouse now stands.  

According to a niece, E. A. Clairetta Fell, daughter of Charles and an English teacher at Hutchinson High School, as interviewed by the Courier reporter, Dr. Fell was a great humanitarian.  “Two of his inventions saved thousands of lives.  Although opposed to capital punishment, he worked on the electric chair to reduce to a minimum the pain of the death penalty.”   Miss Fell, whose father succeeded his brother in the engineering department and later drew up plans for many of this city’s principal sewers, was unimpressed by the size of this particular municipal honor. “They gave our name to a short, narrow alley,” she said.  “Don’t you think the Fells deserve something better?”

Also known as Kip alley, per city street records from July 20, 1868, Keep Alley runs off Virginia Street near Tupper, and is now a residential alley in Allentown.  At the bend in the alley is a garage door, on which someone has painted a big bold graphic—the face of Frank Sinatra, smiling, jaunty “Ol’ Blue Eyes,” who certainly looks like he knew his way around and down an alley or two.

Boys are drawn to alleys, after all, for play that is innocent, and maybe not so much.  “Interesting,” reads the headline on a crime story in The Buffalo Commercial, dated January 22, 1897.  Was it a case of mistaken identity when a young woman identified an alleged arsonist she claimed she saw playing in Keep Alley “about a quarter hour before the fire was discovered in the barns” of a commercial property on nearby Virginia Street?  Police had asked her “if she had seen any person in the alley who had acted suspiciously.  She told police officers about the boy she had seen and described him.”  She was “positive about it.” The uncle of the accused disputed the young woman’s account, asserting that “his nephew could not have started the fire in Haines & Co.’s lumber yard because for two hours previous to the alarm for that blaze the boy was in the house of chemical engine 1 on Franklin street near Seneca.  The statement was substantiated by the firemen.”  Here the trail ends; we can only guess if Keep Alley was just a boys’ play space—or a place where an arsonist could hide out.  Over these many years, perhaps both.

One block west of Holloway Alley, and also spurring north off Virginia Street, between Elmwood and Park, this dead-ending alley appears in city records as of February 6, 1871.  The 1917 Sanborn Map shows the alley leading to the old Elmwood Music Hall, with a listed seating capacity of 2,688.

The Buffalo Commercial of  June 30, 1914, reported on efforts to pave the alleyway, apparently a subject of some debate.  “I am a property owner adjoining the above named alley, and I am in favor of paving,” opined Nellie L. Jewell of 101 Elmwood Ave.  The nays had it, however, and the alley remains brick today—as do controversies about its upkeep.  The Spring 2018 edition of The Allentown Neighbor included an article entitled “Another demo on DeRutte Alley.” Two Park Street residents with deteriorating garages on the alley petitioned the Preservation Board, guardians of our cityscape heritage, for demolition permits—and, in one case, replacement with a parking pad.  Permission was granted, with the following conditions: “Permeable pavers must be used, the site must be landscaped, and a trellis must be installed—all of it covering the footprint of the garage.”

This dead-end alleyway just west of Delaware Avenue with entry off Virginia Street was also known as Holloway Alley on some municipal records.  The 1917 Sanborn Map shows the National Casket Company at Virginia and Delaware, next to Holloway Alley, which is locally known as the site of the stables behind the Delaware Avenue home of Mark Twain when he was an editor in Buffalo.  The Twain carriage was fitted out and parked on the alley—imagine the celebrated author setting out for a Sunday drive the next time you walk down Holloway.  Local history also reveals another prominent newspaperman once living proximate to Holloway Alley.  A notice in The Buffalo Evening News of August 10, 1897, detailed the purchase of a Delaware Avenue mansion by Edward H. Butler, proprietor of that same newspaper.  The new domicile —“all the finishings are of the finest”— was situated on a lot that “runs through from Delaware avenue to Holloway Alley.”  

Running north from Virginia Street towards Allen, between Franklin and Pearl, this brick alley is sited on city records from January and February, 1871.  Today it is lined with brick and frame structures in use as residences.  What provided storage and a carriage way for Franklin Street mansions remains in use as parking and back entrances to contemporary businesses.

Paralleling Elmwood Avenue to the west, and connecting Auburn Avenue and Breckenridge Street, this passage is listed in the 1894 Street Records Book as “Kock” or “Koch Alley.”  On October 14, 1925, Common Council records officially changed the name to Gren-Way, but there was no information given on the provenance of that name.  The alley is notable today for its residential status—tucked behind the busy Elmwood stretch.  Along with some parking and back-door entrances to commercial establishments, Gren-Way features apartments in buildings that still have the distinctive framework of the stables of another era.  Horses and carriages would have been easily accommodated on this relatively wide alleyway.

Off Auburn and Livingston Street, near Richmond meets Colonial Circle, this is a private alley sited on a December 1900 survey of Bidwell Place and Adjoining Property.  This subdivision included, at the turn of the 20th century, title conveyed to the following: Lucy G. Cursn, Philip Houck, Andrew W. Wright, B.T. Lyden, Philip Dohn and L.C. McKinnon.  It remains a solid residential enclave, a hidden cul-de-sac known to family members, friends, immediate neighbors—and the mail carrier.  It also provides an enticement to the accidental stroller, who may notice the odd street sign juxtaposition of Livingston Place and Livingston Alley, a crisscross that beckons further exploration.

Thus rounds out a list of 12 pieces of Buffalo’s transportation past. But why not make it a baker’s dozen with one more iconic Buffalo alley—no strolling here!

Once a symbol of Buffalo’s commercial might, today tourists and locals alike cruise along the Buffalo River between the grain elevators by boat or kayak along this watery passageway.  Though it’s been referred to as an “alley” for some time, it is being newly discovered by intrepid adventurers accessing the freshly-opened waterfront.  Elevator Alley pays tribute to our industrial heritage, bringing you up close to the massive concrete structures and steel spans that made Buffalo a hub of commerce.  And as such, it is certainly worthy of mention in a list of the city’s storied streets.