Explore Canalside and the Erie Canal

In 1900, Buffalo was the eighth largest city in the U.S. As the world ushered in the new century, Buffalo celebrated its status as a vibrant center for transportation, commerce, and industry and became home for thousands of immigrants who chose to begin their new lives in this promising City by the Lake. Postcards erupted on the scene around 1907, a short-lived product of the collision of emerging print technologies and existing postal regulations. This lovely book offers a fascinating and historically accurate glimpse of Buffalo’s Main Street at the turn of the last century through postcard scenes. These views of downtown reveal Buffalo as one of the most progressive and vibrant cities of the time. How fitting that postcards, made popular during Buffalo’s heyday, should pave the way through the city’s illustrious past. Perhaps they also provide valuable clues for directions in which Buffalo’s beautiful downtown could and should develop a century hence, rising from the ashes to emerge once again as a vital, vibrant hub for the entire region.