Buffalo's Early Italian Americans
Buffalo, New York, is located at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the southern head of the Niagara River, directly across from the Canadian border town of Fort Erie, Ontario. Buffalo saw a huge influx of Italian immigrants from the 1890s through the 1920s, as the area provided abundant jobs for immigrants willing to do manual labor. The local mills and factories flourished as they made use of the hydro-electric power gained from nearby Niagara Falls. The opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway in 1957 provided additional employment opportunities on Buffalo's busy waterfront. Buffalo is the state's second largest city after New York and was one of the first American cities to have electricity.
Like many other cities, such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Detroit and Pittsburgh, the West Side of Buffalo saw the growth of a "Little Italy" neighborhood in the early 20th century. The East Side neighborhood of Lovejoy also had a small Italian immigrant community. In the 1980s the demographics of the West Side shifted, becoming a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, and now the North Side near Hertel Ave. is home to the largest Italian-American community in Buffalo.
Read more about this topic: Buffalo Crime Family
Famous quotes containing the words buffalo, early, italian and/or americans:
“As I started with her out of the city warmly enveloped in buffalo furs, I could not but think how nice it would be to drive on and on, so that nobody should ever catch us.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“With boys you always know where you stand. Right in the path of a hurricane. It’s all there. The fruit flies hovering over their waste can, the hamster trying to escape to cleaner air, the bedrooms decorated in Early Bus Station Restroom.”
—Erma Bombeck (20th century)
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The Americans ... are almost ignorant of the art of music, one of the most elevating, innocent and refining of human tastes, whose influence on the habits and morals of a people is of the most beneficial tendency.”
—James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851)