Blog Archives
the Crossroads Project / an Investment in Buffalo’s Past and Future
Buffalo Memorial Auditorium
Something I’ve been working on recently brought to mind the original name of what is now the First Niagara Center in downtown Buffalo. When the project was first announced and throughout the funding and construction phases, the new arena to replace Buffalo Memorial Auditorium was known as Crossroads Arena.
I was only about twelve at the time, but thought that was an pretty awesome name. I don’t think I was alone, in fact, I think just about the entire city thought that sounded great. The name followed its purpose, as this nearly 20,000 seat arena has hosted everything from hockey, lacrosse, arena football, soccer, to concerts, college basketball and professional wrestling.
Of course, then everyone’s heart was broken with the naming rights inevitably sold off and Crossroads Arena was suddenly Marine Midland Arena. Which was, you know… lame. Apparently people in Buffalo don’t swear enough so in 2011 First Niagara acquired the naming rights and we were given the ‘effin center’. But until then it was most commonly known as the Arena. The Aud, the Arena, the Ralph. We do what we want.
This was the first major sports complex built in New York State in 20 years and more than half of the $127 million bill was secured from private sources, the rest coming from city, county and state sources. It took several years to get the project off the ground during which time the Sabres’ owner Seymour Knox III had to threaten the sale or relocation of the franchise.
In an article from June 1995 I came across the line, “Local and state officials hope that Crossroads Arena will act as a catalyst for the long-awaited rebirth of the Buffalo Waterfront.” Well, it’s taken nearly twenty years but it seems that hope is finally coming to fruition with the almost continuous announcements of projects and proposals in the downtown area focused on rebuilding the waterfront. The HarborCenter project, with two ice rinks, training facility, indoor parking, a 205-room hotel and other restaurant and retail space, is currently under construction on Webster, adjacent to the arena. Canalside and the Commercial Slip has been gaining ground since 2009 in rebuilding portions of the canal system that made the city an industrial hub. With concert series, festival and its weekly Saturday Artisan Market, as well as the Military & Naval Park and Liberty Hound restaurant, the Erie Canal Harbor Development Corporation has been steadily revitalizing the area.
So maybe the name has changed, from Marine Midland to HSBC to First Niagara, but the idea behind the arena is still there. It was called the Crossroads Project before any other name, and while that may initially have simply meant a single location for large sporting and entertainment events in the city, its presence in downtown Buffalo has made it a crossroads of something much more. With the construction of HarborCenter and the rebuilding of the Commercial Slip, the arena has anchored the crossroads of Buffalo’s past and future. It may have changed names and it may have taken almost twenty years, but the investment in Crossroads Arena seems to finally be paying off.
Aaron in Ten Years
I had to tell a woman today that my friend was dead. It had been almost five months but she didn’t know. It was five months empty because he wasn’t there. Five months wishing he still was. Five months of being reminded of him every day we would have worked together. There was still an empty space in those days where his smile should have been. It had been five months, but he was still dead.
How do you tell someone that? How do you look this woman, a perfect stranger, straight in the eyes and tell her that he’s dead? Nineteen years old and he’s dead.
“He was so nice,” is what she told me, “He was such a nice boy.”
That’s what everyone says, too. He was nice, so nice. The nicest person you could know. Always smiling. That’s one of the things we miss the most around here. His smile. He was always smiling. He’d walk in and no matter how late he was or the reason for it, he’d be smiling. He didn’t smile because everything was perfect and nothing bothered him. His life wasn’t perfect. But it was his life not ours. So when he saw us, he smiled. Around us the rest of the world, that world beyond the doors of the store, didn’t matter. The rest of his life couldn’t bother him there. So he smiled.
The rest of his life couldn’t bother him. The rest of his life. Didn’t even realize how that came out. The rest of his life. Nineteen years old and the rest of his life doesn’t exist anymore.
He was only trying to help his friend. Some people could look at what happened and say that’s why they don’t put themselves on the line for anyone, just mind your own business. But that wasn’t him. That’s not the type of person or the type of friend that he was. His friend was in trouble and he had to help him. He had to, whatever the cost. Whatever the cost…
Not many people would agree with that. Not many people would do something for a friend no matter what the situation was. He would. He did. His friend was alive.
It’s easy to look around and say that it seems like the best types of people are dying. Or is it simply that those deaths are the ones that stay with us. The senseless death. Those are the ones we can never forget. The tragic death.
The people dying are the best types of people because they’re willing to put themselves on the line. They’re willing. Not willing to die. That isn’t their intention. They’re willing to stand up when no one else will, to step in when everyone else has put their head down. Not many people would do that anymore.
Everyone says they would. You hear it all the time. I’d do anything for you. I would die for you. I’ll be there for you no matter what. But what does that mean today? Today that means I’ll do anything for you that won’t take too much time or energy or inconvenience me in any way. Today that means I’ll die for you until I feel the slightest bit of pain and then you’re on your own; then it’s your problem and you need to deal with it yourself. Don’t worry, it will teach you a valuable lesson. You’ll be better off if I don’t intervene.
People who say that never mean it. It’s the people who are afraid to say it or the people the thought never occurred to who would be the most willing when the time comes. Words are meaningless. Words are a waste. How you live is how you are remembered. In some cases, too, it’s how you die.
He was always smiling. No matter what, he was smiling. Everyone, when they talk about him, that’s the first things they all say. They miss his smile. There are endless stories about him. Endless good times. Funny stories. Almost endless. They remind me how little I actually knew about him. I barely knew beyond the smile. They knew him better, and I’d listen to every story. They all had one. I suppose this is mine.
Senseless death. Senseless.
That’s what the woman kept saying. First she was shocked. Shock. Disbelief. And then— “How?”
I had to tell a woman today my friend was dead. Then I had to tell her how, at least the version of how that I had heard. But I couldn’t tell it all. I couldn’t tell the story; only that he was stabbed helping his friend. Protecting his friend.
Her reaction spread to me. My knees felt weak, my hands shook. My voice caught in my throat each time I tried to answer. And my eyes… everything started getting a little blurry. When I could finally answer so did hers.
He’d been dead five months. Five months and she didn’t know. Five months and I had to be the one to tell her when she asked, “Is Aaron working today?”
I had to tell this woman with the only words I could find, “Aaron died.”
the Mystery of Charles E. Clarke
previously published on BuffaloSoapBox
I rely on Wikipedia for a lot of things, but have learned use it only as a jumping off point. The articles may give you a decent overview, but who hasn’t found contradicting information within one or hugely uninformative entries altogether?
That was the case when I decided to look into Forest Lawn. I wasn’t looking for an extensive history and I didn’t need a book’s worth of information on its life story. I needed just this much information how it came into being and the people involved in that.
The Wiki article mentions that Forest Lawn was “founded in 1849 by Charles E. Clarke” and then mentions some notable graves. OK, Wiki, let’s click on that and see just who is Charles E. Clarke? Apparently an individual with no ties to Buffalo whatsoever, at least according to his article.
While Wiki mentions that Clarke practice law in Watertown (smallest city to have a park designed by Frederick Law Olmsted) and Great Bend; and that he served as a Whig Representative from New York in Congress beginning the same year he founded Forest Lawn, there was no mention of Buffalo. Before Congress he’d served in the State Assembly from Jefferson County. It says he was born in Connecticut, was educated at Yale and lived at the other end of Lake Ontario for the latter part of his life—what interest did he have with founding a cemetery in Buffalo, and one that he ultimately wasn’t even buried in?
I was about to fire off a quick email to a friend who knows a great deal of useless Buffalo architectural information along the lines of “Who the hell is Charles E. Clarke?” when common sense—and the more logical first step—dawned on me: why not see what Forest Lawn has to say about him?
So, to the History of Forest Lawn, which explained things a bit more. It goes into the opening of the Erie Canal turning Buffalo into a thriving western outpost, the gateway to the west essentially, and with the introduction of Joseph Dart’s steam-powered grain elevator in 1842, the City becoming the “busiest grain-transfer point in the world, surpassing London, Odessa and Rotterdam.”
But Charles Clarke—focus. He’s only described as a “Buffalo lawyer” but Buffalo is mentioned, so I suppose that’s a win? Its something.
In The Dictionary of the United States Congress and the General Government complied back in the day by Charles Lanman, lists him only as a “Representative in Congress, from that state” (New York), but also as having been born in New York. Not Connecticut?
So he was a Buffalo lawyer during the most successful period in the City’s history. That’s cool. Apparently he was also enamored with the Pére-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris and decided that Buffalo, with its growing reputation as a national commercial terminus and the literal boatloads of cash making their way into the City, would eventually need a similar resting ground.
Like its Parisian progenitor, Clarke’s cemetery was to be built outside the city— 2½ miles outside actually. Think about that: at the time he purchased the land that included rolling hills and bubbling streams, Forest Lawn was originally 2½ miles from the City of Buffalo. Most of what lies within that area didn’t exist.
And while that doesn’t seem like a big distance, Delaware Park is less then two miles.
When was the last time you walked that? You stopped halfway around didn’t you? No, don’t pretend it was to look at the bison, you couldn’t even make it once around, could you?
City of Buffalo, 1849
City of Buffalo, 1849In 1832, North Street was the northern border of the City and it wasn’t until 1868 that the border was moved to Ferry Street and the first generation of mansions on what quickly became ‘Millionaire’s Row’ went up. Even then, there was about a half mile between the northern edge of the City and Forest Lawn Cemetery. Like the Pére-Lachaise, the city would soon develop around the cemetery, offering residents a reflective escape from the noisy city streets without having to travel miles to open country.
Clarke also found inspiration in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Massachusetts, which looked to Pére-Lachaise as well when it was established in 1831 as America’s first rural or garden cemetery.
All three sought to provide a rural cemetery that “encouraged people to walk the grounds, admire the funerary art, and commune with nature.”
His remains were moved to Forest Lawn in 1884, which probably explains why he looks so pissed.
In addition to Clarke’s work thinning out foliage on hilltops, adding more trees to the meadows, creating twisting roadways that at the time were considered absurdly wide, but intended to allow room for parking one’s carriage, he also instituted a policy of “providing interesting and appropriate sculpture to the natural setting of Forest Lawn.”
The first statue in the cemetery was of Red Jacket, celebrating his influence in establishing a relationship between the Seneca and US after the revolution, as well as fighting in the War of 1812 at the Battles of Fort George and Chippawa. That statue was commissioned by personally by Clarke.
Today the cemetery features sculptures and monuments celebrating Presidents, industrialists, innovators and businessmen who made Buffalo their home and in doing so created the foundation the City was built on.
From its first inhabitant, Joseph Dart, to President and hospital namesake Millard Fillmore and George Birge of the Pierce-Arrow Motor Company, Louise Blanchard Bethune, the country’s first professional woman architect and designer of the Hotel Lafayette, and Albert James Myer, founder of the National Weather Service, the list of figures prominent both nationally and worldwide throughout history who made their homes and livelihoods in Buffalo is impressive. And Rick James is there, too.
To paraphrase the Forest Lawn website, the cemetery serves both the living and the dead of the City as an outdoor sculptural chronicle of local history and accomplishment. And, according to Wikipedia, all thanks to a guy who had absolutely nothing to do with Buffalo.
Gas Station Burrito 