For other places with the same name, see Buffalo (disambiguation).
The largest city in New York State's Niagara Frontier, Buffalo is a city full of surprises. Though Buffalo is sometimes the butt of jokes about chicken wings, its long-suffering sports teams, and the mountains of snow under which it is supposedly buried each winter, local residents and others who are in the know tell a different story: one of vibrant nightlife, world-class museums and cultural attractions, tight-knit neighborhoods with community spirit and a real sense of place, a winning combination of high quality of life and low cost of living — and the sunniest summers in Northeastern United States.
Buffalo's central business district (CBD) boasts monumental architecture, a revitalized historic waterfront, the vibrant Theater District, the thumping dance clubs of Chippewa Street, and the Medical Corridor.
Allentown and the Delaware District
Allentown's hipster bars, rock clubs and art galleries are a lively counterpart to the sedate Delaware District's quiet residential streets. Both are heaven for architecture buffs, with charming Victorians lining the side streets off Allen Street and sumptuous Gilded Age mansions on Delaware Avenue's Millionaire's Row.
What once was Buffalo State College<nowiki>'</nowiki>s student ghetto has now become a bourgie oasis in the heart of the city: if you have money to burn, the quirky fashion boutiques and gift shops along Elmwood Avenue are calling your name (that goes double if your tastes run more toward the "basic" than the trendy). Meanwhile, at the north end of the strip, the Museum District is home to some of Buffalo's best.
With more of a suburban feel than other Buffalo districts, North Buffalo is a diverse hodgepodge composed of Little Italy along Hertel Avenue, scruffy but pleasant University Heights, and the beautifully-landscaped, historic residential areas of Parkside, Central Park, and Park Meadow.
Buffalo's most up-and-coming area. Long the epicenter of Hispanic culture in Buffalo, the West Side now boasts a veritable United Nations of immigrant communities and a nascent arts scene along Grant Street, ramshackle Victorian cottages in Prospect Hill and the West Village gradually being spruced up to their former glory, and waterfront parks galore. To the north are historic Black Rock and working-class Riverside.
Separated from the rest of the city by the Buffalo River, proudly Irish South Buffalo can seem like a city unto its own: to the north, the historic Old First Ward and Cobblestone District and newly redeveloped Larkinville; to the east, pleasant parkland and quiet residential streets; to the west, the grain elevators and rail yards of Buffalo's mighty industrial past; along the lake shore, the redeveloping Outer Harbor, Buffalo's newest summer playground.
Buffalonians are quick to deride the East Side as a drug- and crime-infested ghetto. Those who are smart enough to disregard the locals will be rewarded with the jaw-dropping sight of huge, ornate churches built by 19th-century German and Polish immigrants, an educational look into Buffalo's African-American history, cultural attractions like the Buffalo Museum of Science, and other surprises in this truly off-the-beaten-path district.
Buffalo is New York State's second-largest city, with (as of 2010) a population of 261,310 in the city proper and 1,135,509 in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls Metropolitan Area. Buffalo is the cultural and economic center of the Western New York region. Though for the past half-century it has been rightly considered a stagnant working-class city that has suffered from the aftereffects of deindustrialization, Buffalo's economy has turned around significantly, with an unemployment rate in April 2014 of 5.8%, running below the national rate of 5.9% and the statewide rate of 6.1% for that month. Perhaps surprisingly given its history as a center of heavy industry, Buffalo has also been cited as the third-cleanest city in the United States. Buffalo was named one of the Dozen Distinctive Destinations for 2009 by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, whose 2011 National Preservation Conference was held in Buffalo and was the largest and best-attended of these annual conferences in the history of that organization. Other titles bestowed on Buffalo include a placement among the "44 Places to Visit in 2009" by the New York Times, the "All-America City Award" for the years 1996 and 2002, and one of the 10 best cities in the U.S. to raise a family, according to a 2010 feature in Forbes magazine.
A great part of Buffalo's appeal to visitors is the still-palpable sense of its history as an important industrial center. Majestic historic buildings and sites around every corner tell the story of a city that was great once and has all the tools in place to be great again someday.
Though the area had been settled by the Iroquois since well before Columbus and was visited periodically by French fur trappers beginning in the 17th century, Buffalo's history per se begins about 1789, when Cornelius Winney set up a trading post at the mouth of the Buffalo River. At the time, this site was still far beyond the frontier of white settlement. It was not until 1793 that the Holland Land Company, a syndicate of investors from the Netherlands, purchased the tract of Western New York wilderness that included Buffalo. Land agent Joseph Ellicott, who arrived at Winney's trading post in 1798, felt that it had the potential to be the site of a thriving city. He gave the name New Amsterdam to the village he laid out there, though it was soon renamed Buffalo after the adjacent river. (The question of where the Buffalo River itself got its name is still very much a mystery — the most well-known theory, which has the French explorer Sieur de la Salle exclaiming about the beau fleuve, or "beautiful river", that he saw while sailing along Lake Erie in 1679, is almost certainly untrue; also, no buffalo or bison were known to have been present in Western New York at any time since the arrival of the white man, though 17th-century French explorers did find some living relatively nearby on the south shore of Lake Erie, in present-day Ohio.) Ellicott laid out a grand radial pattern of streets and public squares inspired by the one designed by his brother Andrew for Washington, D.C.; however, despite his lofty aspirations, Buffalo remained a tiny outpost whose main claim to fame during its very early history was as the site of several important military installations and battles during the War of 1812 (famously, the village was burnt to the ground by British troops in December 1813 as part of the Niagara Frontier Campaign of that war).
Buffalo's status as a frontier backwater abruptly ended when, after a hotly contested dispute with the neighboring village of Black Rock (later to be annexed by its rival), Buffalo Harbor was designated as the western end of the Erie Canal, a great inland shipping lane extending westward from the Hudson River at Albany for a distance of 363 miles (584 km) in all. The most ambitious work of infrastructure undertaken in the U.S. up to that time, the Erie Canal greatly lowered transportation costs and singlehandedly made large-scale settlement of the lands west of the Appalachians economically viable. The magnitude of the Erie Canal's commercial importance is illustrated by the fact that in the first five years after its completion, Buffalo's population more than tripled (to 8,668); two years later, in 1832, Buffalo was finally incorporated as a city.
Buffalo's early economic mainstay was as a transshipment port, where grain from the Midwest was unloaded from lake freighters and transferred to canal boats headed for New York City; it was in Buffalo where the world's first grain elevator was constructed in 1843, and indeed there are still many elevators that remain standing around Buffalo Harbor. Over the second half of the 19th century, the Erie Canal gradually became obsolete, but that scarcely affected Buffalo's explosive growth. Instead, the city maintained its status as a transportation hub by transitioning into the second-most important railroad center in the U.S. (after Chicago); the New York Central, Pennsylvania, Michigan Central, Nickel Plate, Erie, Delaware Lackawanna & Western, West Shore, Baltimore & Ohio, and Lehigh Valley Railroads all passed through Buffalo at the height of the railroad era. In addition, the steel industry became a major player in the local economy in 1899, when the Lackawanna Steel Company moved its base of operations from Scranton, Pennsylvania to a site just south of the city line. By 1900, Buffalo boasted a population of over 350,000 and was one of the ten largest cities in the United States.
The Pan-American Exposition was a World's Fair that was held in Buffalo in 1901, at the apex of the city's glory days; it was intended to showcase, among other things, the technological marvel and economic possibilities of electric power (Buffalo's proximity to Niagara Falls, a site of early ventures in the generation of hydroelectricity, gifted it with the cheapest electricity in the nation at the time). Though the dazzling sight of the fairgrounds, illuminated by night with this new technology, earned Buffalo the enduring nickname "City of Light", the Pan-American Exposition's main historical significance is much more somber in nature: it was at the Exposition where, on September 6, 1901, U.S. President William McKinley was fatally shot by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, moments after concluding a speech at the Temple of Music.
Buffalo continued to grow during the first part of the 20th century. However, trends were beginning to emerge that would, by 1950, cause the city's growth to slow, stop and then reverse. As in other American cities, wealthier residents began to leave their homes in town for quieter, greener suburban properties outside the city line. This began in the 1910s and 1920s — many of Buffalo's older suburbs, such as Kenmore, Eggertsville, Pine Hill, and Snyder, date to this time — and kicked into high gear during the post-World War II economic boom. At the same time, the growing American middle class began to migrate in ever-larger numbers to areas in the West and South with milder climates, at the further expense of the cities of the Northeast. The construction of the Interstate Highway System fueled suburbanization at the same time that it contributed to the decline of the railroads and of Buffalo's port, as goods could be shipped more cheaply by truck.
However, the single most important cause of the free-fall that Buffalo suffered during the late 20th century was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959. Historically, Buffalo's importance as a port was largely due to the barrier that Niagara Falls posed to shipping. However, thanks to the expansion of the Welland Canal as part of the Seaway, freighters loaded with grain and other goods could now access the ocean directly via the St. Lawrence River, rather than stopping at Buffalo to transfer their cargo to railroad cars headed east. Within ten years of the Seaway's inauguration, most of the grain elevators at Buffalo Harbor had been abandoned, and the port that was once filled to capacity with ships was now nearly empty. As well, the steel plant in Lackawanna closed its doors for good beginning in 1977, unable to compete with cheaper foreign steel. By 1980, Buffalo's population was roughly equal to what it had been in 1900, down nearly 40% from its peak of 580,132 just thirty years earlier.
To add insult to injury, during the 1960s and '70s Buffalo's civic leaders responded to the deteriorating social conditions in the city by demolishing (in the name of "urban renewal" and "slum clearance") ethnic neighborhoods in such places as the Ellicott District and the Lower West Side that, though working-class, were in many cases healthy and vibrant. In particular, the splendid brick Victorian cottages of what was once the Lower West Side's "Little Italy" were nearly all lost to the wrecking ball, while the new public housing projects erected in the Ellicott District soon became high-rise versions of the slums they replaced, as the mere construction of new buildings did nothing to address the underlying social problems in the neighborhood. At the same time, noisy and intrusive expressways were constructed directly through Delaware Park and Humboldt Parkway, destroying the verdant ambience of what were (respectively) the largest park and the grandest parkway designed for the city by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted; thankfully, forceful opposition from neighborhood residents spared the Allentown Historic District a similar fate. In downtown, only one of the many examples of the senseless destruction of Buffalo's architectural heritage occurred in 1969, when several blocks of handsome Victorian commercial blocks as well as the stunning, castlelike Erie County Savings Bank building were demolished to make way for the Main Place Tower, a bland modernist office tower with an attached suburban-style shopping mall that utterly failed to attract shoppers back downtown in favor of the strip malls and plazas of the suburbs.
Despite these grave problems, the mentality in Buffalo never crossed the line into total defeatism, which was helpful when Buffalo's decline started to level off in the 1990s. The broad-based grassroots protests that accompanied the opening of the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in 2007, which had been presented to the city as a means of spurring development and attracting tourists, serves as perhaps the quintessential example of the city's new approach: rather than relying on one-shot "silver bullet" solutions to the city's problems such as the casino, Buffalo has begun to model its strategy on the successful revival of other Rust Belt cities such as Pittsburgh and Cleveland — a strategy of accepting the reality that heavy industry is gone for good and, instead, using the valuable resource of Buffalo's unusually high number of colleges and universities to encourage development of a diverse range of high-tech industries, such as the medical research and biotechnology ventures that have sprouted north of downtown under the aegis of the University of Buffalo Medical School. The business district, once replete with boarded-up storefronts and nearly deserted after the end of the workday and on weekends, has enjoyed a new measure of vitality due largely to the conversion of disused office space into high-end downtown apartments and condominiums, a commodity for which many Buffalonians were surprised to discover there was considerable pent-up demand. Additionally, Buffalo can boast of an architectural heritage that is still substantial despite the misadventures of the 1960s, a vibrant range of cultural institutions, and a perennially low cost of living. In the past few years, this new approach has engendered a newfound strength among Buffalo's preservationist community, a dogged devotion by its citizens to cultural attractions such as the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Buffalo Zoo, and continued diversification of the local economy. Conversely, what remains of Buffalo's traditional heavy industry has benefited from the mini-rebound in American manufacturing after the 2008 recession; for example, despite General Motors' financial troubles of that period, that company made substantial investments in its plant in nearby Tonawanda in 2010, adding several hundred new jobs in the process. Buffalo even happened to stem its population losses per the 2020 census, after 70 years, when it was reported that a remarkable 22,000 people had moved into the city just between 2019 and 2020. However, there is still much progress yet to be made; the bit of swagger with which residents of the "City of No Illusions" carry themselves today, finally reinvigorated after decades of decline, is unmistakable.
Buffalo, although most famous for its winters, has four very pronounced seasons.
In the first half of winter, beginning in approximately November, the city can get lake-effect snow: cold winds blowing over the warmer waters of Lake Erie pick up a lot of water vapor, which is dumped as snow as soon as they reach land. This usually ends in January, when the lake finally freezes over. Contrary to popular myth, however, Buffalo is not the coldest or snowiest city in the country—or even in New York. The Buffalo airport averages 93 inches (236 cm) of snow per winter. On average, Buffalo only has 3 days per year where the recorded temperature dips below 0°F (-18°C). Buffalo's snowy reputation is based in large part on some of its most famous storms: the Blizzard of '77, the "October Surprise" of 2006, and the "Snowvember" blizzard in 2014 all received a lot of media coverage, but none of those things are normal occurrences in an average Buffalo winter.
Spring is rainy and cool up through the end of April. The temperatures can fluctuate wildly in March and April. It is not unusual to see snow one day, and a temperature in the mid-60s Fahrenheit (almost 20°C) the next.
Summer tends to be very comfortable and sunny — in fact, Buffalo has more sunny summer days than any other major city in the Northeastern U.S. The moderating effects of Lake Erie have allowed Buffalo to be one of very few places in the United States where the temperature has never reached 100°F (38°C). On average Buffalo has 60 days a year with temperatures reaching over 80°F (27°C).
Fall is warm and beautiful as well. The temperature usually stays warm enough through October or so, and one can watch the trees change colors in comfort. The days are warm, the nights are cool, and the first frost doesn't usually come until well after Halloween. Leaf hunters will be pleased with the number of trees (Buffalo is also one of the most tree-filled cities in the nation!) as well as in the surrounding areas.
For more books about Buffalo, specifically ones that take place in or have to do with a particular neighborhood of the city, please see the respective district articles.
The history and extent of Buffalo's association with American cinema may come as a surprise to some. Early on in movie history, downtown Buffalo's Ellicott Square Building was home to the world's first purpose-built, permanent motion-picture theater, the Vitascope Theater, which was opened on October 19, 1896 by Mitchel and Moe Mark, who some years later would go on to build the world's first "movie palace" in New York City. Also in 1896, Thomas Edison sent camera crews to Buffalo, making it one of the first cities in America to appear in the movies. Edison also had the Pan-American Exposition filmed in 1901.
Under the aegis of the Buffalo Niagara Film Commission, an embryonic film industry has developed in the area which is beginning to produce some quality independent features. These and the more than 100 other films that have been shot in the Buffalo area over the last century include:
English is spoken in Buffalo and the surrounding area on a virtually universal basis. Though the West Side is well known as the home of the city's Hispanic community (mainly Puerto Ricans and Dominicans), the majority of Buffalo's Latinos are able to speak English as well as Spanish. Also on the West Side, there is a diverse collection of communities of first-generation immigrants centered around Grant Street, most of whom speak some degree of English in addition to their native languages (Amharic, Somali, Vietnamese, Burmese, and Bengali are prominent). In any event, visitors to the West Side will have no significant issues with regard to language.
Though Buffalo's neighborhoods include many vibrant ethnic enclaves, very few residents of these districts (other than perhaps a few elderly individuals) can speak more than a word or phrase or two of their respective ancestral languages.
The regional dialect of English spoken in Buffalo — especially among Italians and Poles of the working class — falls within the grouping of Great Lakes English along with the traditional Chicago and Detroit accents, with the hard, nasally, slightly pinched-nose vowel sound in words like "car" and "stop" and the defricativization of the hard "th" sound (whereby "this" and "that" become "dis" and "dat"), a dialect that will be instantly familiar to those who remember the "Da Bears" guys from Saturday Night Live. Nonetheless, Buffalo's twist on the Inland North dialect involves some unique features such as the devoicing of voiced word-final plosives ("cold" becomes "colt", "rug" becomes "ruck"), and a habit of ending sentences with the word "there" (pronounced "dare") in much the same way Canadians use "eh?" — two speech patterns that are notoriously prevalent among Buffalo's Polish community.
From the airport, Buffalo is accessible via NFTA bus routes:
In addition, the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is served directly by a number of intercity bus lines; see the "By bus" section. All buses, NFTA and long-distance, are boarded at the bus lane on the east side of the terminal, on the arrivals level. This is also where Uber and Lyft (see "Ride sharing" section below) pick up.
Buffalo Airport Taxi<nowiki>'</nowiki>s stand, as well as a number of rental car facilities, are found directly across from the terminal's main exit, on the arrivals level. For more information on taxi service and car rental, see the "Get around" section below.
For those who are coming by private plane and want to avoid the congestion of Buffalo Niagara International Airport, the closest alternative is Buffalo Airfield in West Seneca. Other general-aviation airports in the vicinity include Buffalo Lancaster Regional Airport in Lancaster, Akron Airport in Akron, and North Buffalo Suburban Airport in Lockport.
The New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) runs east to west and connects Buffalo to other major cities and regions — New York City, the Hudson Valley, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, and Rochester to the east, and Erie and Cleveland to the west. The New York State Thruway is a toll highway over most of its length, with the sole exception of the toll-free portion between Exits 50 and 55, which roughly corresponds to Buffalo's inner-ring suburbs. The New York State Thruway Authority accepts E-ZPass for toll payment, as well as cash.
Interstate 190 begins at Exit 53 of I-90 near the city line, extending west into downtown. At that point, it turns northward and mostly parallels the Niagara River, linking Buffalo to Niagara Falls and extending onward to Canada via the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge. Interstate 290 links I-90 with I-190 via Buffalo's northern suburbs. Interstate 990 runs southwest-to-northeast through suburban Amherst between I-290 and the hamlet of Millersport, after which point Lockport is easily accessible via NY 263 (Millersport Highway) and NY 78 (Transit Road).
If coming from Ontario, the Queen Elizabeth Way (QEW) is the best way to access Buffalo. The most direct border crossing into Buffalo, the Peace Bridge, is at the end of the QEW in Fort Erie. Other bridge crossing options include the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, along with the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge in Lewiston. All of these bridges are easily accessible from the QEW; follow the well-posted signs.
By car, Buffalo is about two hours from Toronto, one to one and a half hours from Rochester, two and a half hours from Syracuse, and six to seven hours from New York City.
Average wait times at the various border entries vary: at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo/Fort Erie and the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls, wait times over 30 minutes are unusual on most days other than holiday weekends, whereas at the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge, the norm is 30-60 minutes, more on holiday weekends.
Buffalo is accessible from the east and west by Amtrak, which services two stations in or near Buffalo.
Buffalo is served by the following Amtrak lines:
The Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center, at 181 Ellicott St. downtown, serves as Buffalo's hub for intercity buses, a stop on most NFTA Metro Bus routes, and the city's main taxi terminal.
The following bus routes serve the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center:
Service from Jamestown via Fredonia, Dunkirk, and various points in between. Service from Olean via Franklinville, East Aurora, Buffalo Niagara International Airport, and various points in between.
Service from DuBois via St. Marys, Bradford, Olean, Salamanca, Ellicottville, Springville, and various points in between.
Service from Cleveland via Ashtabula and Erie (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities). Service from New York City via Newark, Binghamton, Cortland, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities). Service from New York City via Scranton, Binghamton, Ithaca, Geneva, Rochester, and Batavia. Service from Boston via Worcester, Springfield, Albany, Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Batavia, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport (not all runs stop at all intermediate cities). Service from Toronto.
Service from New York City via Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Service from Washington, D.C. via Baltimore and Philadelphia.
As the place where the Erie Canal met vast Lake Erie, Buffalo's early growth came thanks to the Great Lakes shipping industry. Nowadays the canal has been rerouted to end downstream in Tonawanda, but that's not to say that the canal and the lake aren't still a fairly common, if novel, way to arrive in Buffalo. The West Side, downtown, and the Outer Harbor boast a variety of places for boats to dock. For visitors, the best place to dock is:
For most visitors to Buffalo, access to an automobile will prove extremely useful, if not quite utterly necessary. Buffalo's public transportation system provides access to the majority of the metropolitan area. Travelling around the city proper by public transit can be relatively hassle-free, especially on weekdays; however, transit riders travelling to the suburbs should be prepared for service that is infrequent (and, on the weekends, often non-existent).
In addition to the Interstate highways mentioned in the "Get In" section, Buffalo has several intraurban expressways useful to visitors:
Buffalo's highway system was designed for a city twice its size (a reflection of the population loss the area has undergone between the 1950s and today); as a result of that, the city does not suffer nearly as much from traffic congestion as other U.S. cities. Rush hour, such as it is, occurs on weekdays roughly from 6:30AM-9AM and from 4PM-6:30PM. A good rule of thumb the locals know is that, even at the height of rush hour, it generally takes no more than 30 minutes to drive from downtown to the outer edge of suburbia.
Rental car facilities can be found mainly at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. Alamo, Avis, Budget, Dollar, Enterprise, Hertz, and National all have offices directly on airport property, while the Buffalo locations of ACE and Fox Rent A Car operate out of the Quality Inn across the street.
In addition, Hertz, Budget, and Enterprise all operate smaller car rental facilities at various locations in the city itself. See the various district articles for more information on those.
Members of the Zipcar car-sharing program can access vehicles in the Buffalo area from various locations in the city, as well as from the North Campus of the University at Buffalo in nearby Amherst. See the district articles for further information.
Uber and Lyft operate in Buffalo. As of November 2017, pricing for both includes a booking fee of $2.15, plus a base fare of $1.10, plus 22¢ per minute and 95¢ per mile on top of that, or a minimum total fare of $7.35 (Uber) or $5.20 (Lyft). There's also a $3.00 surcharge for service to and from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport for Lyft, but not Uber. Surge pricing comes into effect during certain periods of high demand, and can inflate the above prices drastically.
Buffalo's public transportation system is operated by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA). They run a single-line light rail system (the Metro Rail) as well as an extensive bus network. The NFTA system is focused around three main nodes. From largest to smallest, these nodes are located in downtown Buffalo, at University Station (at the outer end of the Metro Rail), and at the Portage Road Transit Center in Niagara Falls. Most of the buses whose routes begin and end downtown access the Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center directly; many also service the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak station.
The Metro Rail extends along Main Street from the University at Buffalo's South Campus at the northeast corner of the city southward to Canalside in downtown Buffalo, a distance of 6.4 miles (10.3 km). With nearly 25,000 riders per day, the Metro Rail boasts the third-highest number of passengers per mile (km) among light-rail systems in the United States. The northern portion of the system is below ground. As the subway enters the downtown core, at the Theater District, it emerges from the tunnel and runs at street level for the remainder of its length. Rides on the above-ground portion of the Metro Rail are free of charge. To ride in the underground portion of the system, it costs $4 for a round-trip ticket, or $2 for a one-way ticket. The Metro Rail is a popular mode of transportation for employees and residents who live along the line and north of the city to commute downtown, and also for attendees of downtown events who want to avoid paying high prices for parking.
Rides on a single bus or light rail vehicle cost $2.00 regardless of length. The exception is the "Enhanced Express" service: Routes #60 — Niagara Falls Express, #64 — Lockport Express, and #204 — Airport-Downtown Express, and some runs of Routes #69 — Alden Express and #72 — Orchard Park Express. An additional 50¢ surcharge per trip applies on Enhanced Express buses.
There are no free transfers between buses. Passengers who will need to transfer from the bus to the Metro Rail, from the Metro Rail to a bus, or between bus lines should consider purchasing a day pass for $5. For further information on public transit in Buffalo including schedules and maps of individual routes, visit the NFTA Metro webpage.
In Buffalo, taxis can generally be dispatched quickly and with ease; however, in general, the only places where they can be hailed on the street are at the airport and around the Metropolitan Transportation Center, the various downtown hotels, and (at certain times, and with some luck) Allentown, the Elmwood strip, and around the colleges and universities.
As in many cities, bicycling as an alternative method of transportation is growing more and more popular in Buffalo. However, in terms of the development of infrastructure such as dedicated bike lanes on city streets and bike parking areas, Buffalo lags behind many other "bikeable" cities such as Minneapolis, Portland, and Boston. Despite this, scenic bike routes such as the Shoreline Trail and the Scajaquada Creekside Bike Path are immensely popular with locals, and under the aegis of the city's newly adopted "Complete Streets" program, dedicated bike lanes and other rights-of-way are being added to more and more of the city's streets.
GO Bike Buffalo is the local organization that promotes and advocates for cycling and other sustainable transportation alternatives in Buffalo. The Community Bicycle Workshop they operate at 98 Colvin Ave. in North Buffalo offers used parts and complete refurbished bikes for sale, as well as special programs periodically throughout the year.
Reddy Bikeshare has 200 bikes to tool around town on, each GPS-equipped with Social Bicycles (SoBi) technology. Rates are $3 for a 2-day membership plus 10 cents per minute, or $55 for an annual membership plus 1 cent per minute (as of Mar 2023).
To use a Reddy bike, sign in to the SoBi mobile app to find and reserve an available bike at any of the various Reddy racks around the city (or simply walk up to a rack and enter your account number and PIN on the bike's keypad to unlock it). Then, when you're finished, simply lock your bike up at any Reddy rack, or else at any public bike rack within one of Reddy's free parking zones (Elmwood Avenue, Allen Street, Main Street downtown, and two locations on the South Campus of UB). There's a $2 fee for locking a Reddy bike up anywhere other than a Reddy rack or free parking zone. If you need to stop off somewhere along the way, you also have the option to "hold" your Reddy bike, which will enable you to lock it temporarily without incurring the $2 parking fee and without the bike becoming available for reservation by other users. When you're ready to take off again, simply enter your PIN number on the bike's keypad and you're good to go.
See the district articles for the locations of individual Reddy bike racks.
For individual listings of attractions, please see the respective district articles.
Buffalo's wealth of cultural attractions is surprising given the city's somewhat small size. The museums here are many and varied, and are a point of pride for Buffalo's citizens. Arguably the most interesting among them are a great number of institutions that focus on the area's past. Those who are curious about Buffalo's rich history are advised to first stop in at the gargantuan Buffalo History Museum which focuses on the city's history in a general sense, then take your pick of the smaller, more specialized museums — the Lower Lakes Marine Historical Society Museum to learn more about the Great Lakes shipping routes that gave Buffalo its importance as an inland port, the Colored Musicians Club Museum or the Nash House Museum for African-American history in Buffalo, the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum for the story behind Buffalo's importance in the early-20th century automotive industry, the Buffalo Fire Historical Society for the history of firefighting in Buffalo, and more.
More so even than its range of cultural attractions, Buffalo's art scene is huge for a city its size, with galleries large and small to suit all tastes. The Museum District at the north end of the Elmwood Village is the site of Buffalo's two largest art galleries, the beautiful Albright-Knox and the Burchfield-Penney. The Buffalo Religious Arts Center is an off-the-beaten-path gem in Black Rock, dedicated to preserving the statuary, icons, stained glass, and other objets d'art from the many churches and other houses of worship that have closed in the wake of Buffalo's late-20th-century population losses.
Smaller storefront galleries are plentiful, and are concentrated in some of Buffalo's more interesting areas, such as Allentown, the Theater District, and Hertel Avenue — as well as, increasingly, emerging artistic communities on the Lower West Side, in Grant-Amherst, and just south of the Theater District in the 500 Block of Main Street.
More and more, Buffalo's exquisite and well-preserved architecture has grabbed the attention of locals and tourists alike. Buffalo's architecture took center stage when the 2011 National Preservation Conference was held in the city to unanimous acclaim. Buildings from almost every decade of Buffalo's existence are still preserved, with more being restored each year.
An enormous wealth of information about Buffalo's rich architectural heritage is available at the award-winning website, Buffalo Architecture and History.
Buffalo is a great place to enjoy the outdoors — especially in the warm months. A side effect of Buffalo's notoriously nasty winters is that locals really make the most of the warm-weather months. Predictably, in March or April on the first nice day of the year, the streets are thronged with pasty-skinned locals, dressed in shorts and tank tops despite the still-chilly temperatures, ravenously drinking in the fresh air and sunlight after the long, bleak winter. Autumn is also a pleasant time to be outdoors in Buffalo, with the crisp, fragrant air a perfect complement to the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.
The city of Buffalo contains over 200 parks, both large and small. Among the largest and most interesting of Buffalo's parks were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, unquestionably the greatest landscape architect of the 19th Century, in conjunction with his then-partner Calvert Vaux. Buffalo's Olmsted parks are an interconnected network of six large parks and six smaller green spaces (three of the latter survive today), linked to each other by wide, tree-lined thoroughfares called parkways modeled after the grand boulevards of Paris. Though he would go on to design similar park systems for other cities, Buffalo's is the oldest and one of the best-preserved Olmsted park systems in existence — and the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, the not-for-profit that's been in charge of maintenance of the Olmsted park system since 2004, is hard at work repairing and restoring elements that have been lost over the years to put the parks in even better shape than they are now.
The Olmsted parks that will be of the most interest to visitors are Delaware Park, Buffalo's largest at 234 acres (93 ha) which boasts amenities including the Buffalo Zoo, a Rose Garden and a Japanese Garden, and public art installations, and South Park, which contains the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens. Additionally, though it's not an Olmsted park, LaSalle Park has an outdoor amphitheater, baseball and soccer fields, a dog run, and walking and jogging trails in a beautiful waterfront setting overlooking Lake Erie.
Speaking of which: as if to defy the ugly, intrusive Interstate 190 and Buffalo Skyway that run along the shoreline, Buffalo's waterfront is becoming more and more of a focal point for outdoor recreation. Situated in the heart of downtown, Canalside is ground zero for waterfront recreation in Buffalo, with summertime concerts and festivals held seemingly every day in the midst of preserved remnants of the historic Canal District. A number of harbor cruise lines are also based at Canalside, as is the Buffalo and Erie County Naval and Military Park.
Parkland is also abundant on Buffalo's waterfront. In addition to the aforementioned LaSalle Park, Broderick Park is a small green space at the southern tip of Unity Island that's most famous as the northern end of the Bird Island Pier, a 1.3-mile (2 km) walkway with an unparalleled view of the mouth of the Niagara River, lower Lake Erie, and — at its southern tip — the Erie Basin Marina and downtown. Further north, Riverside Park is an Olmsted park at the far northwest corner of the city, adjacent to the Niagara River. Deserving of special mention is the Outer Harbor, a vast expanse of former industrial land south of downtown that became a state park in September 2013. The Outer Harbor features Gallagher Beach, a pebble beach popular with boaters and windsurfers, as well as Times Beach Nature Preserve and Tifft Nature Preserve, where walking trails meander through wetland habitats filled with migratory birds and native fauna.
A total solar eclipse on Monday 8 April 2024 starts at local time and lasts just under 4 min. The chances of a clear sky are 35%. The track of totality is northeast from Mexico and Texas to Ohio then straddling the Canada–New England border.
Buffalo's calendar of annual festivals, parades and events is huge and growing. Ethnic pride festivals such as the Buffalo Greek Fest, the Buffalo Italian Heritage Festival, and Dyngus Day play a preeminent role, though a diversity of events of all kinds is enjoyed by citizens. Naturally, the lion's share of these festivals take place during the warm months, but efforts have been made to expand the slate of offerings in winter as well.
The festivals and events listed in this section take place at multiple venues city- or regionwide. For events specific to a particular venue or neighborhood, see the respective district articles.
Make no mistake about it — Buffalo is a sports town. Buffalonians are doggedly loyal to their teams despite the fact that the city hasn't won a national championship in any of the big four American sports since 1965 — the four fruitless trips to the Super Bowl by the Buffalo Bills and two to the Stanley Cup Finals by the Sabres in the intervening years are losses that local fans have been looking to avenge for a long time.
Major-league sports are played downtown at the KeyBank Center, where the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres have their home ice, and at New Era Field in suburban Orchard Park where the Buffalo Bills play for the National Football League. Bills fans are some of the most gregarious and welcoming fans in the NFL, and it is not uncommon for them to celebrate and party with opposing fans, creating a real party atmosphere.
Buffalo has a number of teams in smaller leagues as well. These teams tend to be more successful on the field than the big-league clubs. Baseball's Buffalo Bisons have won seven pennants in the AAA-level International League and American Association, most recently in 2004; they play at Sahlen Field downtown. The Buffalo Bandits play indoor lacrosse at the KeyBank Center and have won four NLL championships. Soccer fans will want to check out the NPSL's FC Buffalo; matches take place at All-High Stadium on Main Street. Finally, the city's newest sports team, the Buffalo Beauts, play their National Women's Hockey League opponents at the HarborCenter.
In the world of college sports, the University at Buffalo's Buffalo Bulls reign supreme. Bulls football and basketball games are played on the North Campus in Amherst, at UB Stadium and Alumni Arena respectively. Canisius College's Golden Griffins, who play at the Koessler Athletic Center on Main Street and the HarborCenter downtown, also have a sizable local following.
Golfers visiting the area might want to check out the suburbs first; public and private courses are plentiful outside the city limits. However, those who want to hit the links in Buffalo itself can do so in style. No fewer than three of Buffalo's Olmsted parks — Delaware, Cazenovia, and South Parks — boast golf courses (the former has 18 holes, the latter two have nine), and the Grover Cleveland Golf Course in University Heights is famous as the site of the 1912 U.S. Open. See the district articles for more details on individual courses.
Buffalo is a hotspot for freshwater fishing, with a remarkable diversity of species thanks to its location at the junction of Lake Erie and the Niagara River, which each feature different scenarios for anglers.
In Lake Erie, the marquee catch is smallmouth bass: the Queen City has been recognized by Bassmaster magazine as one of the top three bass fishing destinations in the United States. If you're angling from shore — say, at Buffalo Harbor State Park or Ship Canal Commons in South Buffalo — the prime times are early May through mid-June and October through November, just after the lake thaws and before it freezes again. The bass move to cooler waters in midsummer, but if you have a boat, they're still easily catchable at those times in the deeper parts of the lake. Most of the bass you'll catch will be between 2 and 4 pounds (1 and 2 kg), though it's not unheard of to reel in whoppers of 6 or 7 pounds (3 kg) from time to time. Aside from bass, Lake Erie has some of the best walleye fishing you'll find anywhere, with average catches ranging from 5 to 8 pounds (2.5 to 3.5 kg), as well as muskellunge (especially around the mouth of the Buffalo River) and yellow perch.
The Buffalo River boasts its share of fishing spots too — notably RiverFest Park, Conway Park, Mutual Park, Seneca Bluffs, and other green spaces in the emerald necklace of the Buffalo River Greenway. Despite generations of heavy industry that once left it an ecological dead zone, the river was cleaned up enough by the early 1980s for fish to filter their way in once again, and today a typical catch might include bullhead, largemouth bass, yellow perch, and steelhead trout.
The upper Niagara River, meanwhile, is a great place to catch steelhead, lake trout, and northern pike which teem in its cool, fast-flowing waters all season long. This is also a place to find smallmouth bass in the summer months, when the shoreline areas of Lake Erie are too warm for them. Unity Island is the place to be for river fishing in Buffalo — folks from the West Side's Burmese refugee community reeling in dinner for their families are a regular sight at places like Broderick Park, the Bird Island Pier, and Unity Island Park. (But think twice before you follow their lead in eating your catch: though the Niagara River and Lake Erie have come a long way in terms of pollution, it's advised to severely restrict if not completely avoid eating fish caught in local waters. For more specific information, see the New York State Department of Health Fish Advisory.)
It's no Vegas, but gamblers have a number of options in and around Buffalo.
The $130 million permanent home of the Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino in the historic Cobblestone District opened in 2013 and expanded only four years later; it boasts over 1,100 slot machines and 36 table games. The Buffalo Raceway, on the grounds of the Erie County Fair in the suburb of Hamburg, has slot machines, video poker, and, in season, live harness racing.
Further afield, there are several other destinations for fans of horse racing, slots, and other gaming (Niagara Falls foremost among them). See the Go next section for more on those.
For a city its size, Buffalo has a surprisingly large, active, and diverse theater scene. Even after the closure in 2008 of the biggest producing theater in town, the Studio Arena Theatre, the Theater District, bounded roughly by Washington, Tupper, Franklin, and Chippewa Streets, has remained vibrant, with Curtain Up!, the gala event that marks the opening of the theater season, drawing larger-than-ever crowds downtown each September.
There are plenty of theaters outside the Theater District as well, many of which are connected to the theater programs of the various colleges and universities in the area. See the district articles for details.
For listings of individual venues, see the various district articles.
Despite the many directions in which it has evolved over the decades — from the soulful, R&B-influenced "Buffalo Sound" of the '60s exemplified by local acts like Raven and The Vibratos (the latter featuring a young Cory Wells, later lead singer of Three Dog Night), to a thriving punk, hardcore and new wave scene in the early '80s, to a ragtag brotherhood of vaguely jangly alternative acts in the '90s, to the kaleidoscopic diversity of today — one thing that's always remained the same about Buffalo's music scene is its tight-knit camaraderie, its loyalty to its hometown fan base, and, despite the occasional native son or daughter that's gone on to greater fame (notably Rick James, Ani DiFranco, Brian McKnight, the Goo Goo Dolls, and most recently the Griselda Records hip-hop collective), its relative obscurity outside the confines of the local area. Buffalo may not have the reputation of Austin, but as a live music town it's worthwhile for locals and visitors alike.
Major national touring artists usually take the stage downtown. The biggest of the big stars — your U2's, your Rolling Stones — usually play at the KeyBank Center, or occasionally at New Era Field out in Orchard Park. But downtown also has a handful of midsize concert venues such as the Town Ballroom, Mohawk Place, and the Rec Room that play host to second-tier acts. Visitors from north of the border might be surprised to see many Canadian groups that haven't yet "made it big" in the States playing to packed houses at places like the Town Ballroom — long lacking decent homegrown rock radio, local fans have taken a shine to Toronto stations and, as a result, bands like the Tragically Hip are huge draws in Buffalo. As well, summertime brings well-known names to the outdoor Canalside Live concert series, and Babeville, on Delaware Avenue on the northern fringe of downtown, is both the headquarters of Righteous Babe Records, the label helmed by Buffalo's own Ani DiFranco, and the site of Asbury Hall, a concert venue situated in a former church that regularly hosts shows by Righteous Babe's stable of folky indie singer-songwriters and other artists of the same ilk.
If local music is what you're looking for, the two hotspot neighborhoods are Allentown and Grant-Amherst. Allentown bars like Duke's Bohemian Grove and the storied Nietzsche's are great places to see homegrown rockers and singer-songwriters doing their thing — usually the same two dozen or so bands playing "musical chairs" among the venues. Though it's uncommon, on occasion you'll even see a nationally famous name take the stage at these places (this seems to happen most often at Duke's). In Grant-Amherst, you're more likely to catch country, blues, or roots-rock acts — the nucleus of the Grant-Amherst musical scene, the Sportsmen's Tavern, calls itself the "honkiest, tonkiest beer joint in town".
Fans of other types of music aren't left out in the cold either: the blues shows at Main Street's Central Park Grill are locally legendary, jazz fans can attend great concerts in the historic Colored Musicians Club or check out exhibits on local music history in the attached museum, and Kleinhans Music Hall, where the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra holds court, is a Nationally Registered Historic Place designed with pitch-perfect acoustics by architects Eliel and Eero Saarinen.
Buffalo is home to a large number of private and public colleges and universities. The largest school in the area is the University at Buffalo (UB). One of the four "university centers" of the State University of New York (SUNY) system, UB is renowned as a large public research university. For this reason, it is one of 62 elected members of the prestigious Association of American Universities. UB has two campuses: the smaller South Campus is in the University Heights neighborhood at the city's northeast corner, and the larger North Campus is in the suburb of Amherst, about four miles (6 km) northeast of the South Campus.
Buffalo State College, also part of the SUNY system, is across from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, at the north end of the Elmwood Village. Canisius College is Buffalo's largest private college, located near the intersection of Humboldt Parkway and Main Street. Other colleges and universities in the city and its surrounding area include Trocaire College, Medaille College, Villa Maria College, D'Youville College, Daemen College, and the three campuses of Erie Community College.
The University at Buffalo has an annual Distinguished Speakers Series, which has played host to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Michael Moore, the Dalai Lama, Stephen Colbert, and Dr. Sanjay Gupta. These events take place on the North Campus and are open to the public; tickets are available from the University's box office. UB has a free series of summer lectures available to the public, and Buffalo State regularly has events open to visitors.
For listings of individual shops, please see the respective district articles.
Buffalo has a number of interesting shopping districts, each with its own flavor.
The Elmwood Village extends along Elmwood Avenue from Buffalo State College south to North Street. This area contains a variety of small shops with a very "independent" feel — you won't find many national chain stores or restaurants here. Elmwood Avenue's specialty is upscale clothing boutiques catering to fashion-forward urbanites; it's also a good place to seek out locally produced art and jewelry, quirky gifts, and some of the finest dining Buffalo has to offer.
Allentown is centered along the entire length of Allen Street from Main to Wadsworth Streets, but especially west of Linwood Avenue. Adjacent, and similar in some ways, to the Elmwood Village, Allentown has more of a bohemian and artsy vibe compared with the college students and yuppies that frequent Elmwood. Amid the proliferation of hipster bars, you'll see a lot of antique shops, small art galleries, and clothing stores with a more urban style.
Hertel Avenue, between Delaware and Parkside Avenues in North Buffalo, is home to a growing assortment of small shops. Hertel is the place to come to browse art galleries, shop for antique and contemporary furniture and home decor, mellow out in head shops such as Terrapin Station, and sample Middle Eastern cuisine at a variety of restaurants and bodegas at the west end of the strip, near Delaware Avenue.
Grant Street, which runs north-to-south through the Upper West Side, is the main thoroughfare of two newly revitalized shopping areas in this rapidly gentrifying area of town. The stretch between (approximately) West Delavan Avenue and Hampshire Street, centered on West Ferry Street, is an up-and-coming commercial strip known as Grant-Ferry. A true "melting pot", with the Hispanics who've been here for years now joined by Somalis, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Eastern Europeans, and Buffalo State College students, Grant-Ferry is accordingly home to a modest but growing collection of ethnic food markets, clothing stores, and so forth. Also, Grant-Amherst, a short distance north at the corner of Amherst Street, was named Buffalo's "Best Up-and-Coming Neighborhood" in the "Best of Buffalo 2011" competition in Artvoice. Grant-Amherst boasts a small but growing collection of art galleries, antique shops, and restaurants within walking distance of Buffalo State College. Visitors should be warned, however, that despite the ongoing upswing, the neighborhoods around Grant Street are still a good deal "grittier" than places like the Elmwood Village and Allentown.
In the 'burbs can be found the usual lineup of malls and plazas. The largest mall in the area is the Walden Galleria, on Walden Avenue in Cheektowaga, 10 minutes from downtown via the Kensington Expressway and/or Interstate 90. Others include the Boulevard Mall in Amherst, the McKinley Mall on the border between Hamburg and Orchard Park, and the Eastern Hills Mall in Clarence. In Buffalo itself, there is a small area between Delaware and Elmwood Avenues at the northern edge of the city where shopping plazas, big-box stores, and chain restaurants can be found.
Buffalo is a haven for great food.
If you're not a fan of Buffalo sauce, virtually anywhere with wings on the menu will offer barbecue sauce as an alternative. Other varieties you'll come across frequently include garlic parmesan, lemon pepper (especially popular among Buffalo's African-American community), honey mustard, and "Italian style" (i.e. breaded and smothered in marinara sauce). Or for something truly unique, head to South Buffalo, which — ever the odd-neighborhood-out — has its own homegrown style of wings you won't find anywhere else in Western New York, let alone the world.
For restaurant listings, please see the respective district articles.
Whereas the area was once largely the domain of unimaginative, cookie-cutter chain restaurants and "greasy spoons", local residents agree that the dining scene in Buffalo has come a long way in the past twenty years. Increasingly innovative and high-quality establishments have popped up more and more often, and visitors — even those who have been to Buffalo in the past — may be pleasantly surprised by the array of options.
In much the same way as with retail shops, every neighborhood in Buffalo seems to have its own specialty when it comes to restaurants. Generally speaking, head downtown for the fanciest fine dining Western New York has to offer, to the Elmwood Village for Greek diners and dudebro sports bars, to Allentown to sober up over a plate of "drunk food" after a night of bar-hopping, to Hertel for hearty homestyle Italian cuisine, or to the East Side for barbecue and soul food. And if you're a fan of the delectable flavors of Asia, get your fix either on the West Side or out in suburbia, in the quasi-Chinatown that's coalesced in Amherst between the two UB campuses.
Speaking of which: Burmese cuisine is hard to find elsewhere in the country, but thanks to a vibrant community of immigrants and refugees that's coalesced on the West Side since the turn of the millennium, it's quite popular in Buffalo. The two most famous purveyors are the West Side Bazaar on Grant Street and the local chainlet Sun (original location on Niagara Street in Black Rock; branches downtown, on Hertel Avenue, and in Williamsville), though since both are firmly on the radar of Western New York foodies, authenticity varies. Culinary purists should head to Riverside, where they'll find a number of off-the-beaten-path alternatives.
Locations of most national chain restaurants can be found in Buffalo. However, Buffalo also boasts several local and regional chains that are beloved of Western New Yorkers and that serve as staples of the local cuisine.
For additional chains lacking locations in the city proper, see the corresponding section in our article on the Niagara Frontier.
Food trucks have finally arrived in Buffalo, and they're a sensation. There are several dozen food trucks operating in Buffalo today, serving everything from the standard hot dogs and tacos to more unusual selections like elegant scratch-made desserts, gourmet fusion cuisine, and carnival fare. The growth of food trucks in Buffalo has not been without its share of struggle, though: in 2013, a proposal in the Common Council, backed by many prominent owners of local "stationary" restaurants, for a laundry list of new fees and regulations for food trucks was only narrowly defeated thanks to intense grassroots efforts. More recently, however, the line between food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants has blurred: many of the latter have taken an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach and started up their own food trucks, while a few of the most popular trucks have expanded on their success by opening their own brick-and-mortar restaurants that also double as prep kitchens for their mobile operations.
The list below includes some of Buffalo's more popular food trucks (excluding those that are spinoffs from brick-and-mortar restaurants, but including those which started as food trucks and opened restaurants later). Food trucks can most commonly be found downtown or in Allentown, the Elmwood Village, North Buffalo, and Larkinville; if you're in the suburbs, office complex parking lots are another frequent venue. Many food trucks maintain Facebook fanpages and/or Twitter feeds that update fans on where they'll be setting up shop.
Of course, nothing goes better with a big plate of chicken wings than a hot, fresh pizza, and Buffalonians are justifiably proud of the pizza served in their city. You'll find a lot of pizzerias here, but one thing you won't find a lot of are big national outfits like Domino's or Papa John's. Instead, the scene in Buffalo is dominated by neighborhood mom-and-pop pizza places and locally based chains, each of whose individual variation on the classic recipe inspires fierce loyalty — and rivalry.
Buffalo pizza features a crust that's thicker than New York-style but not nearly as much so as Chicago deep dish, with a slightly nutty flavor and an airy sponginess that struggles to support the heaping mass of toppings that generally get piled on. Cheese comes in a thick, gooey layer that spreads out almost to the edge of the crust, the sauce has a noticeably sweet tinge, and pepperoni is invariably of the "cup and char" variety: smaller and more thickly sliced than elsewhere, they curl up into a bowl shape as they cook, blackened on the edges and with a pool of hot grease in the middle.
Of course, locals swear that the pizza here is the best in the world, but the Buffalo style takes some getting used to and definitely has its detractors among visitors. That's probably why in areas with dense concentrations of out-of-towners — i.e. the downtown hotel district and near the large university campuses — the script is flipped, and national chains are more numerous than local joints. (Also, with student populations that draw heavily from downstate, university-adjacent neighborhoods are good places for lovers of New York-style pizza to get their fix.)
Below are listed some of Buffalo's better-known pizza chains:
For additional chains that neither are located in nor deliver to the city proper, see the corresponding section in our article on the Niagara Frontier.
Buffalo's range of grocery stores is comparable to other U.S. cities its size. Naturally, the lion's share of them can be found in the suburbs, but unlike the infamous "food deserts" of other Rust Belt cities like Detroit, even the most forlorn inner-city precincts usually have at least one full-service supermarket.
Among the three major players on the Buffalo grocery-store scene, locally based Tops has the most stores, but the upscale, just-this-side-of-pretentious Wegmans chain, based in Rochester, enjoys by far and away the most loyalty and devotion among locals. Walmart, meanwhile, has greatly expanded its slice of the pie since its first Buffalo-area "supercenter" opened in 1997.
Wegmans has traditionally been the local go-to for upscale specialty groceries, and though Amherst now has a location each of Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, that largely remains the case. An exception to that rule is the Lexington Co-op, a cooperatively-run purveyor of upscale natural, organic, and often locally sourced foods with locations in the Elmwood Village and on Hertel Avenue in North Buffalo.
Budget shoppers can choose from Aldi, Save-a-Lot, and PriceRite, each of which have a handful of stores in Buffalo that sell a more limited range of items in a no-frills environment, for costs considerably lower than the major grocery chains. Of these, PriceRite boasts an especially good selection of fresh produce including an abundance of tropical fruits and vegetables, and Save-a-Lot's offerings in the realm of meats is equally impressive — they're the only discount supermarket in Buffalo that employs their own butchers. Dash's is another small, locally based chain, though with higher prices than the aforementioned three. As a last resort, "dollar stores" such as Dollar General and Family Dollar usually stock a limited range of canned vegetables, dry groceries, snacks, and occasionally milk, eggs, and frozen foods, but not fresh produce or meat.
Finally, the latest craze in Buffalo among aficionados of fresh, locally-grown foods are the farmers' markets which have exploded in number and size over the past decade or so. There are about two dozen of them all over the metro area, where local farmers, vintners, cheesemakers, and producers of other artisanal food products come to sell their goods directly to the public. Farmers' markets usually take place on a weekly basis during the growing season, and many of them double as full-fledged street festivals, with live music, games, and other entertainment.
For bar listings, please see the respective district articles.
As a historically (and enduringly) blue-collar town, Buffalo has traditionally had a fairly dense concentration of bars and taverns. In fact, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, Buffalo is among the top ten cities in the United States in number of bars per capita.
Drinkers in Buffalo aren't limited to rough-and-tumble working-class watering holes, though — although there are plenty of those, Buffalo has quite a number of more upscale nightlife districts, each with a distinct character. There's truly a bar scene in Buffalo for every taste, from the thumping dance clubs of Chippewa Street, to the cooler-than-thou hipster dives of Allentown where local rock bands gig, to the chichi cocktail bars in the Theater District that fill with theatergoers before and after shows, to the chill yuppie hangouts of the Elmwood Village, to the historic taverns of the Cobblestone District and the Old First Ward where it doesn't take much imagination to picture the canal boaters, grain scoopers, and railroadmen of a century ago relaxing at the bar with a frosty mug after a long workday.
Weekend nights usually see the police out in force in Buffalo's nightlife districts, searching for drunk drivers. As mentioned in the "Get around" section, you can often find taxis lingering around the bars, but competition for a cab can be fierce and rates are often high. Uber and Lyft are often a better option in these cases.
Last call in Buffalo is 4AM. For this reason, many bars in Buffalo don't get going until sometime after midnight on weekends. As elsewhere in the United States, the legal drinking age is 21.
Coffee culture is alive and well in Buffalo. Though Starbucks outlets are a dime a dozen here as elsewhere in the country, locally owned mom-and-pop cafés have always been where it's at for Buffalo's trendy set, and there are three principal neighborhoods where you'll find them. Downtown — particularly the Theater District and the 500 block of Main Street — sports a handful of grab-and-go places for office workers in need of a quick caffeine fix, Allentown's coffee shops are great places to lounge in an ambience that's trendy yet not stiflingly pretentious, and at the far end of the spectrum, the off-the-beaten-path coffeeshop scene on the West Side cranks the hipster factor up to 11, with an atmosphere and clientele such that you might wonder whether you're in Buffalo or Brooklyn.
There are a couple local coffeeshop chains of note:
For hotel listings, please see the respective district articles.
There is a wide range of high-quality lodging to choose from in both Buffalo and its suburbs, encompassing hotels, motels, B&Bs, hostels, and guest houses. In particular, downtown Buffalo is in the middle of a boom in hotel construction, with about a half-dozen new properties opened or nearing completion. Much of this is the product of the preservation of architectural heritage that has come into vogue in Buffalo, with beautiful but vacant old buildings restored and repurposed — so if you're staying downtown, particularly at the Lofts on Pearl or the Hotel Lafayette, be prepared for a real Gilded Age treat. Of course, not all hotels downtown are old — the 205-room Marriott that opened in 2015 is the centerpiece of the HarborCenter development in burgeoning Canalside, and existing hotels such as the Hyatt Regency have been renovated extensively. Elsewhere in the city proper, Delaware Avenue in Allentown is the site of the luxurious Mansion as well as the grand old Hotel Lenox, and several B&Bs can be found peppered here and there catering to travelers in search of a distinctive, quirky urban experience.
In suburbia, the usual range of budget and mid-priced chains can be found clustered mostly around highway interchanges and in various other places. Two especially big clusters of hotels exist just south of the University of Buffalo's North Campus in Amherst, as well as around the Buffalo Niagara International Airport, where the arrival of discount airlines in Buffalo, cheap airport parking, and the highest airfares in North America out of Toronto have combined to spark a hotel boom comparable to downtown's.
The area code for the entire Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area (as well as Chautauqua and Cattaraugus Counties to the south) is 716. It is not necessary to dial the area code for local calls.
Publicly accessible wireless Internet is mainly limited to coffee shops, bookstores, and other such establishments; Internet cafés are virtually unknown in Buffalo. In particular, McDonald's, Starbucks, SPoT Coffee, Tim Hortons, and Barnes & Noble offer free WiFi and boast many easy-to-find locations throughout the region. Public libraries also usually offer Internet access.
Buffalo's main post office and mail processing facility is at 1200 William St. in the city's Lovejoy neighborhood.
The reputation of Buffalo's East Side as a rough part of town can be over-exaggerated by locals, but it's not entirely undeserved. Generally speaking, the East Side is the city's poorest residential district, with widespread urban blight and high crime rates plaguing many parts of the district (especially the Bailey Avenue corridor). To a lesser extent, some parts of the West Side also have these problems. That being said, crime rates in Buffalo have fallen to levels not seen in half a century. What violent crime does occur is usually drug- and gang-related and does not target tourists. Follow general precautions that would apply in any urban area — locking car doors, keeping valuables out of sight, being aware of your surroundings, etc. — and you should be fine pretty much anywhere.
Panhandlers can be found occasionally on Chippewa Street downtown and in Allentown and the Elmwood Village, though not nearly to the degree of most other cities. Aggressive panhandling is virtually unknown.
Since the Courier-Express went bankrupt in 1982, the Buffalo News has been the city's sole daily newspaper. With a circulation of nearly 155,000 daily and over 235,000 Sunday, the Buffalo News is the most widely circulated newspaper in Upstate New York. Journalists employed by the News have won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for Editorial Cartooning and one for Local Reporting; in 2009, the New York State Associated Press Association named the Buffalo News New York State's "Newspaper of Distinction" for that year in recognition of the quality of its journalism. These facts may come as a surprise to locals. Listings for concerts, movies, theatre productions, and other events around town are published in Gusto, a weekly supplement to the Buffalo News published on Thursdays.
Buffalo Rising is an excellent online publication whose "beat is New Buffalo" and which features "original content written by fellow Buffalonians knowledgeable and passionate about their city". Buffalo Spree is a monthly magazine that features articles on dining, events, and the arts in the local area.
The African-American community of Buffalo is served by the Challenger Community News (dead link: January 2023), which celebrated its 50th year in operation in 2013. La Ultima Hora and Panorama Hispano publish news relevant to Buffalo's Latino community in both English and Spanish, and also serve the Hispanic communities in the nearby cities of Dunkirk, Jamestown, and Rochester. The Am-Pol Eagle is a weekly paper featuring news and commentary of interest to the Polish-American community in the area. The weekly Karibu News (dead link: January 2023) serves Buffalo's growing immigrant and refugee community with local news, commentary, and event information in a variety of languages including English, French, Arabic, Swahili, and others. Also, many of Buffalo's neighborhoods boast community newspapers of their own, such as the Allentown Neighbor and the North Buffalo Rocket.
In the field of radio broadcasting, Buffalo's history is one of the longest in the nation; its oldest radio station, WGR, has been on the air since 1922. Sadly, though, Buffalo radio leaves much to be desired now, a fact that has led many locals to become listeners of radio stations based in Toronto and elsewhere in Southern Ontario. As of autumn 2018, Buffalo's highest-rated radio stations are WBLK, WYRK, and WHTT on the FM dial, and WBEN and WGR on the AM dial.
Radio stations serving the Buffalo area include:
Buffalo's television stations represent all major American television networks. In addition to these, many Canadian television stations based in Toronto are available through Spectrum cable system; however, over-the-air reception of these stations is generally very poor.
Television stations serving Buffalo include:
In case of medical emergency, Buffalo is well-served by a wide variety of hospitals and other medical facilities. The Erie County Medical Center on Grider Street is Buffalo's largest hospital and is a teaching facility for students of the University of Buffalo Medical School. Kaleida Health operates Buffalo General Hospital, Oishei Children's Hospital, and (in the suburbs) Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital and DeGraff Memorial Hospital. Catholic Health Systems of Buffalo operates Mercy Hospital and Sisters of Charity Hospital, which each have one city location and one suburban location.
For more information on specific places of worship, please see the respective district articles.
From early in its history, Buffalo's population has been predominantly Roman Catholic, a trend that still holds true today. The seat of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo is St. Joseph's Cathedral, at 50 Franklin St. downtown. Buffalo has some truly magnificent Catholic churches, particularly on the East Side, where 19th-century German and Polish immigrants built a bevy of massive, ornate stone churches and cathedrals, some still in use, most not. Outside of Buffalo proper but still worthy of note is Lackawanna's Our Lady of Victory Basilica, a massive marble structure that is a testament to the charitable institutions headed by Father Nelson Baker.
Protestant churches are far more numerous in the suburbs than in Buffalo proper; however, there are a few large and active congregations in the city, especially in neighborhoods such as Allentown, the Elmwood Village, and Parkside that still contain significant numbers of old-money WASPs. Notable Protestant churches in Buffalo include St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral at 125 Pearl St. downtown, the seat of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York as well as a Nationally Registered Historic Place and a National Historic Landmark, and E. B. Green's First Presbyterian Church on Symphony Circle, the oldest religious congregation in Buffalo.
Black churches are numerous on the East Side, and the most well-known among them is the Michigan Street Baptist Church, whose roots stretch back to the very beginning of Buffalo's African-American history. Though it no longer hosts regularly-scheduled services, it is still of great importance to connoisseurs of local history as a former "station" on the Underground Railroad and the modern-day centerpiece of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor. As for congregations that remain active today, you have everything from huge modern megachurches like True Bethel Baptist Church to historic congregations almost as old as Michigan Street Baptist, like Bethel A.M.E. Church.
Those of Eastern Orthodox faiths are served by the Delaware District's Hellenic Orthodox Church of the Annunciation and St. George Orthodox Church in Park Meadow. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints has a location near downtown as well as suburban churches in Amherst, Lancaster, and Orchard Park.
Buffalo's modest-sized Jewish community is found primarily in the suburb of Amherst. Congregation Shir Shalom (Reform), Temple Beth Tzedek (Conservative), and Young Israel (Orthodox) are all located there. Temple Beth Zion, situated in a boldly modernist building on Delaware Avenue, is the largest Jewish congregation in the area and also one of the oldest and largest congregations of Reform Jews in the United States. As well, North Buffalo contains several Orthodox shuls left over from its bygone days as Buffalo's Jewish stronghold.
The Jaffarya Islamic Center of Buffalo is Buffalo's largest mosque, a Shia congregation on Transit Road in Swormville, about 20 miles (30 km) northeast of the city. Sunni mosques can be found just south of the city line in Lackawanna — a place that's well-known locally for its growing Muslim population — and also on the East Side.
Adherents of other religions may be interested in the ̈Chùa Từ Hiếu Buddhist Cultural Center of Buffalo at 647 Fillmore Ave., the Buffalo Zen Center in suburban West Seneca, the Hindu Cultural Society of Western New York in Amherst, and the Buffalo Gurdwara Sahib, a Sikh temple at 6569 Main St. in Williamsville.
Unlike the faceless cookie-cutter residential tracts surrounding other American cities, many of Buffalo's suburbs have real character — individual identities of which their residents are fiercely proud. More than that, suburbia's range of attractions, festivals and events, and other items of interest to visitors can hold its own with the urban core.
And of course, no trip to the Niagara Frontier would be complete without checking out...
Everyone, including U.S. citizens, is required to produce a passport or an enhanced drivers' license, both upon crossing the Canadian border and reentering the United States. Vehicles may be stopped and searched, but more often travellers will be sent on their way quickly after showing their passports and answering a few brief questions about the purpose of their trip and the planned length of their stay (this is especially true of U.S. and Canadian citizens).
There are four border crossings in Western New York: the Peace Bridge, by which travellers cross from Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario for a toll of $3.00 (payable in either U.S. or Canadian funds), the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls (toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian), the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge also in the Falls (open only to NEXUS members; toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian), and the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge furthest north (toll $3.25 U.S. or Canadian). For travellers to most Canadian destinations other than Niagara Falls and Fort Erie, the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge offers the most direct route, but is also the one that is most prone to delays.
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