Action Plan: Preservation

Purpose

To establish a practical and powerful system for saving historic structures, preserving and enhancing significant sites, and developing an appreciation of historic preservation as a primary tool in Buffalo’s economic and cultural development.

Context

Understanding Buffalo’s history means respect for the architectural significance of its building stock, the historical significance of sites like those related to the Underground Railroad and the Western Terminus of the Erie Canal, and the structural as well as historical power of our relation to water and Joseph Ellicott’s radial plan. Downtown should be a place of celebration marked by cobblestones, a turn of the century building stock wherever it remains, and well interpreted places of historic as well as artistic merit. It also means respect for the historic radial plan of the city laid out by Joseph Ellicott in 1804. This affection for preservation runs deep in the Queen City and it is about both who we have been and who we imagine ourselves to be in the future.

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