News   Mar 28, 2024
 46     0 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 153     0 
News   Mar 28, 2024
 242     0 

Toronto's relationship with the city of Buffalo, NY.

Toronto's largest fire was visible from Buffalo, they sent a crew to aid


April 19, 2021

On Tuesday, Apr. 19, 1904, a Toronto Police constable was doing his job, looking out for the safety of the city, when he spotted flames coming from E & S Currie Limited's neckwear factory, located at 58 Wellington Street West.

He spotted the fire at 8:04 p.m. at what is now the TD Bank Tower. Immediately, there were 17 fire halls alerted.

The mayor at the time, Thomas Urquhart, messaged the deputy fire chief to see if he needed assistance. The deputy said, “We need all the assistance we can get.”

The fire was visible from Buffalo, New York. Firefighters from the American city came to help control the fire.

It was a windy night, giving the fire the fodder to spread quickly. It blazed for nine hours, destroying more than 100 buildings. Wellington Street West and Yonge Street were not too damaged because the Kilgour Brothers factory had an ever so effective sprinkler system.

John Croft was the only person who died. He was an explosive expert and he died while clearing the ruins from the fire.

Though the fire was officially "under control" by 4:30 a.m. the next morning, small fires sporadically broke out for the next few days. The remains from the fire smouldered for two weeks.

The fire, dubbed the Great Fire of Toronto of 1904, is the city's largest fire to date. Fifteen years prior, a fire broke out in the St. Lawrence Market area of the city, but it was much smaller in size.

 
Not about Buffalo, but I'll just slot in this video here about the rise and fall of Niagara Falls, NY:


Decent video; would like to have seen it delve a bit more into how the big revitalization schemes post-1980 either:

a) Made things worse ( a downtown mall was a failure, but its construction knocked down several buildings of value and also during any brief success after opening further damaged area businesses).


1655729580775.png

source: https://media.wgrz.com/assets/WGRZ/images/269606271/269606271_1140x641.jpg

b) Never came to fruition (discussions w/Edmonton's Ghermezian family about building a mega-mall.)

 
Last edited:
It’s funny, I’ve spent all of my 54 years here in Toronto, I’ve driven pass Buffalo dozens of times on my way to Manhattan, DC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, to visit family and friends, but I’ve never once stopped in Buffalo and stayed there for a few days. From what I can see online it looks like you’re really working hard to revitalize the city and I have to say it looks pretty nice in some areas. I have a passion for heritage architecture, particularly heritage skyscrapers, of which buffalo has the most best preserved heritage skyscrapers in the world as far as I know. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if they actually do tours of all their beautiful old buildings? Aside from the buildings, is there anything else you could recommend I should go see and/or do? It looks like a city with a lot of potential, they just need to switch their demographic from industry to something like IT or government offices. I’ve always had a certain fascination with Buffalo, but it just seems I never get the chance to go, obviously I’m not going to go in the winter, as we speak they just got 5 feet of snow, I’ll wait until the summer, or late spring, any suggestions?
 
It’s funny, I’ve spent all of my 54 years here in Toronto, I’ve driven pass Buffalo dozens of times on my way to Manhattan, DC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, to visit family and friends, but I’ve never once stopped in Buffalo and stayed there for a few days. From what I can see online it looks like you’re really working hard to revitalize the city and I have to say it looks pretty nice in some areas. I have a passion for heritage architecture, particularly heritage skyscrapers, of which buffalo has the most best preserved heritage skyscrapers in the world as far as I know. Out of curiosity, does anyone know if they actually do tours of all their beautiful old buildings? Aside from the buildings, is there anything else you could recommend I should go see and/or do? It looks like a city with a lot of potential, they just need to switch their demographic from industry to something like IT or government offices. I’ve always had a certain fascination with Buffalo, but it just seems I never get the chance to go, obviously I’m not going to go in the winter, as we speak they just got 5 feet of snow, I’ll wait until the summer, or late spring, any suggestions?

A late response but here's my input on Buffalo:

I've done 2 deep dive visits to the city in my life. One was about 10 years ago and the most recent one is probably around 5 years ago. I didn't join any tours and seek information on that, but a friend and I explored the city in rather great depth. Between those visits, I think there's been gradual improvements to the city public realm and building restoration. One of the most noticeable ones being the Richardson Olmsted Campus building:


Silo City is also pretty neat, especially if you're like me and have an interest in industrial type buildings:


I would also recommend checking out a brewery. Buffalo has a decent amount of them. The one we visited was Resurgence Brewing Company and it was solid:


Along with the Albright-Knox Gallery. Or even just the grounds surrounding the museum, which is also quite nice:


In terms of pedestrian activity, their downtown was pretty quiet though for weekend standards. Most of the activity seemed to be happening in Elmwood Village, which kind of had similar vibes to the Annex in Toronto. And also Allentown which felt similar to the Junction here.
 
As this seems to be our default Buffalo news thread, I note that over at Buffalo Rising they have an update on the construction of the 30,000ft2 expansion of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.


From the above:

1679964716403.png


1679964739692.png


Text from the same link:

1679964827416.png
 

Attachments

  • 1679964814685.png
    1679964814685.png
    28.5 KB · Views: 62

Back
Top