City Life: September 13-19

City Life: September 13-19, 2009

Buffalo- whether you call it “The Nickel City”, “The Queen City”, “The City of Light” or “The City of No Illusions”, it is a great place to live. Having existed over 200 years, Buffalo’s history has been dynamic. At around the year 1900, Buffalo was the eighth most populated city in the United States and also one of the wealthiest. One hundred years later, Buffalo is the third poorest city, and the 47th most populated with 100,000 less people living in it than a century ago. Is Buffalo a lost cause? Absolutely not! That dynamic history has given this city a lot of potential. The Undergraduate Academies invites you to explore the city, and its future, with them during the City Life theme week.

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What's in a name?

Buffalo. What do you think of? A hulk of a beast lumbering through the prairie? Here’s a fun fact, Buffalo were never in this area. So why name the city after an animal that’s not native to it? Well the popular theory is that French Explorers saw the Niagara River and commented on the “Beau Fleuve” (beautiful river)- slur that together in an English accent and you have “Buffalo.”
Buffalo’s has racked up a lot of nicknames over its lifetime. The Buffalo News has put together this short list detailing them:

http://www.buffalonews.com/185/story/765297.html

In rough chronological order, then, here’s a look at what the city has been called and why.
• “Queen City more queen of the Lakes.” Cynthia Van Ness, director of library and archives at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, found this regal sobriquet in print in the 1842 Buffalo City Directory, published by Horatio N. Walker, who called his directory “an indispensable index to the rise and progress of our QUEEN CITY OF THE LAKES.”
So wear that crown proudly, Buffalo! In his 1951 pamphlet, “Nicknames of American Cities, Towns and Villages, Past & Present,” Gerard L. Alexander writes, “Consider that with respect to ‘The Queen City of the Lakes,’ (i.e., The Great Lakes) there are five or six populous, handsome, century- or-more-old cities on the shores of these five noble fresh water inland seas: could not the possessor of the proud title as justly be Chicago or Duluth or Toledo or Cleveland or Milwaukee or Toronto?” Yet it is Buffalo that has the name, along with one variation, “The Queen of the Lakes.”
But what exactly does it mean to be “the Queen City”? Is it an indication of second-place status, as a queen walks behind her king? Or is it like chess, when the queen reigns supreme?
“Well, the question is, is any place called the king city?” asked Van Ness. After a brief search, she concluded, “I don’t think ‘the King City’ is as much a city nickname as ‘the Queen City’ is.”

• “The Bison City.” This natural application of the shorter name for the city might be as old as Buffalo itself, although it’s a bit erroneous. Bison and buffalo are actually two different species. The shaggy humped ungulates with the massive heads that we proudly claim as our namesake animal are bison –American plains bison, to be exact, with the emphatic trinomial “Bison bison bison.” How the word “buffalo” was applied to this country’s bison is still being debated, although it might have come from European explorers who were familiar with lightly-furred, smooth-backed African and Asian buffalo.

• “The Flour City.” This description was applied to Rochester in the 1800s and later changed to “the Flower City” to honor the many seed-sellers and plant nurseries of our eastern neighbor. But several sources list Buffalo as “the Flour City,” too. In his 1951 book, George Earle Shankle wrote: “Buffalo is designated ‘The City of Flour’ because of the facts that it is a great transshipper of wheat from the western grain fields to eastern and other milling centers, and it is credited with being the second largest flour-milling center in the United States.” His source for this is a book from 1892, when this could have been true. But it’s a reference that’s now lost on people here.

• “The Electric City (of the Future)” and “The City of Light.” Both of these terms were ambitiously applied to Buffalo around 1901, when the city boasted the dazzling, electrically illuminated wonderland of the Pan-American Exposition. The exposition’s Grand Court was lighted by 200,000 bulbs, and the 400-foot-tall “Electric Tower” was studded with 40,000 lights. The power that lighted the Exposition grounds was generated at Niagara Falls.

• “The Nickel City.” The Indianhead nickel, issued in 1913, was designed with a bison on the reverse and was also called “the buffalo nickel.” Designed by James Earle Fraser, the coin, although attractive, had raised portions that were easily worn away. The design was minted for only the minimum 25 years and discontinued in 1938.
The crisp sound of the “Nickel City” nickname keeps it a local favorite. Valerian Ruminski, Lackawanna- born founder and director of Nickel City Opera, says he sought a phrase that reflected Buffalo but wasn’t Buffalo. But as he publicizes the company, he finds that “not everybody understands what this association is. If you’re from California, you are not going to understand what a nickel has to do with the city of Buffalo.” The opera company’s logo, which shows the buffalo from the coin, helps explain the link visually.

• “The City of Good Neighbors.” This one is easy to nail down. Buffalo became the City of Good Neighbors on Jan. 23, 1940, when Mayor Thomas L. Holling introduced a resolution making the phrase the official municipal slogan and ordered “that said slogan be imprinted, if practicable, on all city stationery hereafter to be printed.” The resolution passed, but only by a vote of nine to six, even though Holling promised to submit his next budget a month early and gave the council’s Republican majority “a box of cigars as a token of good will,” according to that day’s Buffalo Evening News.

• “The Beautiful City of Homes, Diversified Business and Progressive Outlook.” This mouthful of a moniker is listed only in Alexander’s 1951 pamphlet. It never caught on. I wonder why not?

• “The City of No Illusions.” Michael Morgulis, the graphic designer who operates New Buffalo Graphics, sat down in 1977 with a small group of students and professors from UB’s Department of American Studies to design a logo for the department.
“We knew we needed something catchy,” says Morgulis. “Somebody said, ‘I just read this great novel by Ursula K. LeGuin –‘City of Illusions,” and it could be “Buffalo, city of Illusions!” ’ and I said, ‘No way! It’s got to be City of NO Illusions!’
“I made about a dozen T-shirts for the program, and all of a sudden people started calling, knocking on the door and it just took off. I’ve been producing it now since 1977.”
Morgulis said he likes the phrase for several reasons. “It works in terms of being a catchy phrase, but it also works because Buffalo is a unique and interesting place, aside from the weather and the chicken wings. We really do have a wonderful history.”
Sales took off in 2005 when Brad Pitt was photographed wearing a shirt with the logo on it. “Everybody wondered how he got that T-shirt, and I don’t know how it happened,” said Morgulis. “But the photo was everywhere, including People magazine, and I sold so many T-shirts after that, all over the world.”



A Sentence of Buffalos.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Believe it or not, that sentence is grammatically correct.
The word buffalo has three meanings:
1) the animal
2) the city in New York
3) to bully, confuse or bamboozle
Let’s take a look at the sentence again:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Let’s add in some words to clarify:
Buffalo buffalo whom Buffalo buffalo buffalo also, in turn, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Let’s look at it again, changing the word to bison when it means the animal.
Buffalo bison Buffalo bison buffalo buffalo Buffalo bison.
Now, let’s modify that, changing the word to bully when it’s used as a verb.
Buffalo bison Buffalo bison bully bully Buffalo bison.


Finally, let’s add the words back in:
Buffalo bison whom Buffalo bison bully also, in turn, bully Buffalo bison.


And edited for style:
The bison from Buffalo who are bullied and/or bamboozled by other bison from Buffalo, strangely, bully and/or bamboozle bison from Buffalo as well.


Light Rail: a local rail rapid-transit system using large, single passenger cars, railroad-type signals, and, usually, private rights-of-way. Buffalo has one local line that runs from South Campus (University Station) to the Erie Canal Harbor

Greenways: A corridor of undeveloped land that is reserved for recreational use or environmental preservation. The City of Buffalo was fortunate enough to have famous landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted develop parkways of green corridors through the city. These were to be the “lungs” of the city. In 1868, Buffalo was becoming industrial and crowded, so these greenways provided breathing space.

Check out http://buffaloolmstedparks.org/ for more detailed information about these famous parks.

Suburbanization: Suburbanization is the process of people leaving the downtown centers of cities to outlying suburbs around it. This process has a long history starting with the railcar, but was intensified by the widespread use of the car. While it is true that Buffalo’s population is declining, many of its suburbs have grown!
Sprawl: Sprawl refers to the inefficient spreading of population across an area.

How can I get involved?
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African American Studies
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Buffalo Rising

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