The story of Buffalo in the 19th century was one of meteoric growth and the arrival of a colorful patchwork of new immigrants from distant lands, and nowhere in the city was that more true than on the East Side. The East Side's history begins about 1830, just a few years after the inauguration of the Erie Canal which transformed the sleepy village of Buffalo almost overnight into America's newest boomtown. In those years, political strife and religious persecution was driving many people in Germany to seek refuge in the United States, and Buffalo soon became home to a mostly Catholic population of Germans from Bavaria, Württemberg, and other parts of southern Germany (as well as Alsace, a neighboring region of France whose culture is heavily influenced by Germany). These Germans were generally well-educated and skilled at a variety of trades, and the flat, fertile meadows on the east edge of Buffalo was where they settled: close enough to town that services were easily accessible, but far enough into the periphery that they could continue some semblance of the agrarian lifestyle they'd enjoyed in their homeland. As it grew, that area became known as the German Village.

Soon the Archdiocese of New York, whose territory then included Buffalo, took notice, and in 1843 a new church was built in the heart of the German Village: St. Mary's, on Batavia Road (now Broadway) just past Michigan Avenue. Overseen by the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, or "Redemptorists", St. Mary's grew into a major force in the neighborhood, running a parochial school as well as an orphanage and hospital, and serving as a beacon attracting still more settlement to the neighborhood. By 1850, there were about 20,000 Germans in Buffalo — over a third of the city's population — living in three main areas: the German Village itself lay between Genesee Street and Broadway; to the south, in what's now called the Ellicott District, were the fashionable townhouses of well-to-do merchants as well as a small, tight-knit Jewish community along William Street; and the isolated Fruit Belt in the city's northeast corner, a quiet, largely Protestant neighborhood on the high ground north of the German Village, named for the fruit trees the residents kept in their yards.

The Germans weren't the only people who settled east of downtown: Buffalo also had a tiny community of a few hundred African-Americans, centered around Vine Alley — the stretch of present-day William Street between Oak Street and Michigan Avenue, just inward from the Jewish quarter. Though they were victims of prejudice and discrimination as in the rest of the country, Buffalo's blacks were comparatively well-off by the standards of the day, with many working in skilled trades such as barbery and carpentry. The hub of their community was the Michigan Street Baptist Church, at the east end of Vine Alley.

After the Civil War, the booming East Side population began to spread out from the German Village: northward along Main Street, swallowing up the once-sleepy hamlet of Cold Spring with the ample wood-frame houses of wealthy businessmen, as well as eastward along Genesee Street into the countryside. By 1870, Germans made up fully half of Buffalo's population, not to mention a huge chunk of the city's elite: in the political realm, there was prominent lawyer-turned-U.S. District Attorney William Dorsheimer, as well as Philip Becker and Solomon Scheu, Buffalo's first and second German-American mayors, elected in 1875 and 1877 respectively (Becker would return to office in 1886). The German business community, for its part, included merchant William Hengerer, brewing magnate Gerhard Lang, prominent architect August Esenwein, and Jacob Schoellkopf, owner of the largest tannery in the United States and later founder of the first hydroelectric company to draw power from Niagara Falls. Buffalo Germans placed a great deal of importance on preserving their native language and culture: German schools, churches, social clubs, newspapers (including the Täglicher Demokrat, notorious for its political radicalism, and the Buffalo Volksfreund, financed by the head priest of St. Mary Redemptorist and widely seen as the mouthpiece of the Catholic Church), and other institutions abounded to such a degree that English was a second language on the East Side. In fact, there were calls for the city to make German an official language alongside English.

In 1868, William Dorsheimer invited his friend, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to come to town and do for Buffalo what he had done earlier for New York City — design a large central park for the city's denizens to enjoy. Instead, Olmsted went one better and designed an interconnected network of many parks, linked to each other by wide, tree-lined boulevards he called parkways. The eastern extremity of this network was situated on Genesee Street at what was then the edge of the urbanized area of Buffalo, and The Parade, as Olmsted called this park, was designed with the East Side Germans in mind: it was centered on a rustic outdoor beer garden dubbed the Parade House. The park helped attract still more settlers to the outskirts of town — and Humboldt Parkway, the magnificent boulevard that connected it to the rest of the park network, soon became the East Side's most prestigious address: a wide swath of bucolic greenery with rows of large and opulent mansions on each side. Shortly after, the area's outward expansion would get another shot in the arm courtesy of the New York Central Railroad's Belt Line, a 15-mile (24-km) commuter loop that curved through the East Side a little bit outward from Humboldt Parkway, intended to enable residents of the periphery to commute to jobs downtown. Through the 1880s and '90s, the urbanized area advanced eastward all the way to the city line, including what is today Schiller Park, Lovejoy, and Kaisertown.

As the wealthier Germans pushed outward in the late 19th century, fundamental changes came to the areas closer to downtown. The massive wave of German immigration to the U.S. began to subside, and in their place came different nationalities that would add to the increasingly colorful East Side tapestry. By the turn of the century, the old German Village was a Russian Jewish stronghold, and the Ellicott District to the south was a dismal slum populated by a mix of Jews, Italians, and Eastern Europeans. Later on, wealthier Jews moved to Hamlin Park, an attractive neighborhood north of Cold Spring built on the site of the old Buffalo Driving Park. By far the most numerous of the newcomers to the East Side, though, were the Polish immigrants who settled around the corner of Broadway and Fillmore Avenue. Polish immigration to the United States began in earnest about 1850, but at first most of the Poles who arrived in Buffalo stayed only long enough to arrange for travel further west, to well-established Polish communities in places like Chicago and Detroit. That all changed in 1872, when Joseph Bork, a land speculator of Polish descent who owned a large tract southeast of the old German Village, remembered that towns in Poland usually centered around a large church. To entice itinerant Poles to stay in Buffalo, he donated a prime lot to the Catholic diocese for the explicit purpose of establishing a Polish church. The diocese recruited Father Jan Pitass, a Polish-speaking priest from Silesia, and named the church St. Stanislaus, Bishop and Martyr. By the time St. Stanislaus opened, Bork had ensured that several hundred new houses were already completed and waiting to be bought; he repeated the same tactic when St. Adalbert was built in 1886, and for every new church in the neighborhood thereafter. By 1890, Broadway-Fillmore was home to 20,000 Poles.

As the 20th century dawned, the East Side was in its glory days: the last bits of empty land in the city were being colonized by new neighborhoods (Kensington-Bailey, also known as "Summit Park" in those days as it was on the highest ground in the city; Delavan-Bailey, an Italian district gathered around St. Gerard Church; and Highland Park, also known as Fillmore-Leroy, on the former site of the Bennett Limestone Quarry), and Broadway-Fillmore had grown to be the second-largest shopping district in the city, with a lineup of discount stores (Neisner's, Eckhardt's, and the granddaddy of them all, Sattler's) to complement the high-end department stores of downtown. But in the background, the seeds of the area's decline were being sown. Beginning around the First World War and continuing through much of the century, the United States saw a Great Migration of African-Americans, who fled segregation and racist violence in the South and were attracted by the easy availability of factory jobs in the urban Northeast and Midwest. Buffalo, too, received its share of these newcomers — and soon the old black neighborhood around Vine Alley was bursting at the seams. African-Americans began to press outward, and while conditions in Buffalo were markedly better than where they came from, the abandonment by white residents of any neighborhood blacks were seen to be moving into (a phenomenon known as white flight) demonstrated the prejudicial attitudes they still had to face. By the Second World War, the Ellicott District and the old German Village were majority-black and had gained a reputation as a bad part of town — a reputation that was made quasi-official due to a practice called redlining, whereby real-estate agents and mortgage lenders conspired to effectively prohibit African-Americans from buying houses or renting apartments west of Main Street (the proverbial "red line"), while at the same time openly encouraging white buyers to avoid the East Side. Though the Fair Housing Act of 1968 made redlining de jure illegal, it continued behind closed doors for years thereafter.

However, these beginnings of the decline of the East Side were just a prelude to the decline that Buffalo as a whole would suffer beginning after the Second World War. The reasons for that decline were varied, but foremost among them was the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, which enabled freight ships to access the ocean directly via the Welland Canal rather than unloading their cargo at Buffalo for shipment further east by railroad. Within ten years, the once-bustling Buffalo Harbor was virtually empty, and though few East Siders worked at the port itself or in the grain elevators, the shockwaves reverberated all over the city. The combined effect of the Seaway and the new Interstate Highway System caused traffic on the railroads to decline sharply, shuttering many of the warehouses and industrial facilities on the Belt Line, putting many railroad workers in Lovejoy and Schiller Park out of work, and leaving the New York Central Terminal in Broadway-Fillmore, which opened in 1929 on the eve of the Great Depression and had never been used to its full capacity, virtually derelict (it was abandoned outright in 1978). The Interstate highways also enabled erstwhile city residents who worked downtown to move to the (literal) greener pastures of suburbia; consequently, Buffalo's population plummeted from nearly 600,000 in the mid-1950s to less than 300,000 in 2000. The department stores, food markets, and other businesses followed the residents out of the city as well; one by one, the glitzy shopping destinations along Broadway closed their doors, unable to compete with suburban malls and plazas. To cap it all off, the nationwide groundswell of resentment among blacks that culminated in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s fed into the hostility between Buffalo's African-American community and the remaining East Side whites; though Buffalo never had a full-scale race riot as other U.S. cities did during this period, the palpable tensions drove many of the latter over the city line into the lily-white suburbs.

Worse still was the urban renewal that served as the city's hamfisted response to the decline. "Slum clearance" actually began earlier on the East Side than anywhere else in the city — during World War II, the Willert Park Homes, one of three public housing developments built in anticipation of the flood of American GIs returning from overseas, went up on several blocks of the Near East Side. The other two developments, Kensington Gardens and the Kenfield Homes, were built near the city line in areas that were still considered desirable; those were reserved for whites only, while the nominally integrated but de facto all-black Willert Park served to further concentrate poverty in the city's most blighted district, worsening the problem it intended to solve. As in the rest of Buffalo, the urban renewal campaign accelerated after the war: it was in 1959 when three dozen city blocks of the old Ellicott District (bounded by Michigan Avenue, William Street, Jefferson Avenue, and Swan Street) were completely leveled, with a massive new series of public housing developments promised — but with the exception of the Towne Gardens high-rises, the majority of that land remained vacant for over a decade afterward, a "72-acre wasteland in the heart of the city" according to a particularly scathing editorial in the Buffalo Courier-Express. But the coup de grâce came in 1960, when the tree-lined median of Olmsted's Humboldt Parkway was eviscerated to make way for the Kensington Expressway, a noisy intrusion that tore the heart out of Hamlin Park and Humboldt Park and left the formerly bucolic greenway as little more than a pair of expressway service roads.

Since hitting rock bottom around the year 2000, Buffalo has picked itself up and turned itself around with increasing momentum. However, perhaps because it was the hardest-hit part of the city during the downturn and because of the ongoing stigma regarding what lies east of Main Street, the East Side has struggled to share in that rebirth. Crime, poverty, urban blight, and other associated ills remain severe problems, and there are many areas that are going to continue to deteriorate before they bottom out — but signs of hope have belatedly begun to emerge in some parts of the East Side, especially those closest to downtown and Main Street. While the demolition of abandoned buildings continues to rob the district of its historic character, the newly-built infill housing that has gone up in the Near East Side since the 1990s is at least transforming formerly derelict areas into tracts of taxable, owner-occupied housing. The infill continues to creep eastward, but much to the consternation of preservationists the suburban style of the new builds clashes with the historic character of what remains of the old streetscape. But naysayers can take pride in the status of the Central Terminal as one of the largest-scale, highest-profile, and longest-term historical preservation projects in Buffalo to date, all the more remarkable given its location in blighted Broadway-Fillmore. As well, the shiny new Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus has spurred investment in the adjacent Fruit Belt, where property values have skyrocketed and old Civil War-era cottages are being restored, as well as along Main Street, where a growing number of old warehouses and seedy brownstones in the westernmost blocks of Cold Spring and Masten Park (now rebranded Midtown by real estate promoters) have been reborn as upscale apartment buildings marketed to medical professionals. The young, upwardly-mobile urban pioneers who have transformed the West Side have gotten into the act on the East Side as well, especially in Midtown and Hamlin Park; they've been spurred on by Buffalo's Urban Homestead Program, by which abandoned, city-owned houses in blighted areas are sold for $1 to those who have the financial means to rehabilitate them, and who agree to live in the house themselves for three years. The East Side's traditional identity as a haven for immigrants has come full circle, with new arrivals from Asia and Africa attracted to its ample low-cost housing (and increasingly priced out of the newly trendy Upper West Side, where they had amassed previously). With 2015 shaping up to be a record-breaking year in terms of new redevelopment projects planned for the area, it looks like the East Side may finally be starting to turn the corner along with the rest of the city.

Broadway Fillmore Alive is an online information resource that is for its neighborhood what Buffalo Rising is for the city as a whole: a source for news on business openings, cultural events and other happenings, and historic preservation; tidbits of neighborhood history and profiles of local movers and shakers, all delivered with an upbeat tone intended to help in the struggle to "promote, preserve and revitalize East Buffalo's historic Polonia".

• The Last Fine Time by Verlyn Klinkenborg (ISBN 9780226443355). Set in Broadway-Fillmore between 1920 and 1970, this is the true story of the Wenzek family and the Sycamore Street bar they owned: from its early years as a gin mill slaking the thirsts of working-class Polish immigrants, to its post-World War II rebirth as the swank nightspot George & Eddie's. Most if not all of the people, places and products mentioned in this impeccably well-researched book are real, making for a remarkably true-to-life chronicle of everyday life in old Polonia and the changes the neighborhood went through from its heyday to its decline.
• Strangers in the Land of Paradise: Creation of an African-American Community, Buffalo, New York, 1900-1940 by Lillian Serece Williams (ISBN 9780253214089). Chronicling the growth of Buffalo's black community from a tiny enclave to a dominant presence on the East Side during the 20th-century Great Migration, Strangers in the Land of Paradise explores how the migrants' lifestyle, culture, and values evolved over the transition from their former homes in the rural, agricultural South to their new one in the urban, industrial North, and recounts their struggle to get by and be accepted in a community unaccustomed to any African-American presence.

A combination of light traffic and an extensive highway network makes the East Side the easiest part of Buffalo to get around by car. A downside is the condition of the roads: potholes abound, especially on the side streets.

The Kensington Expressway (NY 33) is the main highway thoroughfare through the East Side, entering the city from Cheektowaga on a due-west course, then turning south at its junction with the Scajaquada Expressway (NY 198) and ending downtown. From east to west, interchanges are at:

• Eggert Road, whose exit is directly on the city line and provides access to the residential side streets of Kensington-Bailey and Delavan-Bailey via Eggert Road northbound and southbound, respectively.
• Suffolk Street, which heads northward into Kensington-Bailey and Kensington Heights. If you're heading to the Bailey Avenue business district from the westbound lanes, get off here, turn right on Suffolk, then left down one of the side streets.
• Bailey Avenue, accessible from the eastbound lanes only. One of the East Side's main surface-level roads (see below), you can take Bailey northward into the heart of the Kensington-Bailey business district or southward into Delavan-Bailey, and (further afield) Schiller Park, Lovejoy, and Kaisertown.
• Olympic Avenue, accessible from the eastbound lanes only. Mostly used by trucks for access to the industrial park along William L. Gaiter Parkway, you can also take this exit to get to the residential streets on the western fringe of Delavan-Bailey and Kensington-Bailey.
• Grider Street, which provides easy access to the Erie County Medical Center and Delavan-Grider to the south, and to Highland Park to the north.
• The Scajaquada Expressway (NY 198), the first exit off of which puts you on Main Street (NY 5), which, in turn, takes you north to Hamlin Park and Highland Park or south to Midtown. Continuing westward on the Scajaquada will take you to Parkside, the Delaware District, the Elmwood Village, and Black Rock.
• Humboldt Parkway, from which you can get to the Cold Spring business district and Masten Park via East Ferry and East Utica Streets. If you're coming from the eastbound lanes, you can also reach East Delavan Avenue from this exit, which takes you east to Delavan-Grider or west to Hamlin Park.
• Best Street. Turn eastward and you're right in front of Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and the Buffalo Museum of Science; turn westward and you're soon in Masten Park.
• Jefferson Avenue, accessible from the westbound lanes only. Another major East Side thoroughfare, Jefferson Avenue leads you northward to the outer edge of the Fruit Belt and, beyond that, the Cold Spring business district. Head south to get to the Near East Side.
• Locust Street, accessible from the westbound lanes only. Get off here and you're in the heart of the Fruit Belt.
• Goodell Street, accessible from the westbound lanes only. Goodell itself takes you into Allentown and downtown, but the East Side is accessible from the first cross-street after the interchange, Michigan Avenue. Head north into the Fruit Belt and the back end of Midtown, or south into the hotbed of Buffalo African-American history that is the Michigan Street Heritage Corridor, and, further afield, the Ellicott District.

Interstate 190 runs mostly through South Buffalo, but it clips the southeast corner of the East Side near the city line. You can get to Lovejoy and Kaisertown easily via Exit 1 (South Ogden Street) and Exit 2 (Clinton Street/Bailey Avenue). Also, although the New York State Thruway (I-90) runs north-to-south beyond the city line in Cheektowaga, Exits 52W (Walden Avenue) and 52A (William Street) provide relatively easy access to Schiller Park and Lovejoy, respectively.

The pattern of surface streets on the East Side is basically a gridiron overlaid with a number of roads that fan outward from downtown like the spokes of a wheel — extensions of Joseph Ellicott's historic radial street plan that dates back to 1804. Clockwise from the northwest, you have: Main Street (NY 5), Kensington Avenue (which doesn't extend to downtown itself, but branches off from Main Street and proceeds northeastward in the same radiating direction), Genesee Street, Sycamore Street (which merges with Walden Avenue at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park), Broadway (NY 130), William Street, Clinton Street (NY 354), and Seneca Street (NY 16). These streets are among the East Side's major thoroughfares, and for travellers without a car at their disposal, they're among the best-served public transit routes in the city: catching a bus or train into downtown or out to suburbia along any of these streets is a cinch, even on weekends.

As for crosstown routes, the north-to-south thoroughfares are some of the East Side's most crowded streets, home to business districts that bustle despite being in marginal areas off the radar screens of most locals. Heading inward toward downtown, there's Bailey Avenue (US 62), the single busiest street in the East Side that links the neighborhoods of the Far East Side: Kensington-Bailey, Delavan-Bailey, Lovejoy, and Kaisertown, followed by Fillmore Avenue, Jefferson Avenue, and Michigan Avenue. The East Side's major east-west crosstown routes are, from north to south: East Amherst Street, East Delavan Avenue, East Ferry Street, East Utica Street, and finally Best Street, which turns into Walden Avenue at its junction with Genesee Street in front of Martin Luther King, Jr. Park.

Realistically, unless there's a special event going on such as Dyngus Day in Broadway-Fillmore, you are virtually never going to have a problem finding a place to park on the East Side. Even if by chance parking on the main thoroughfares is crowded, you'll always find a spot on a side street nearby. And parking is almost invariably free – except for one block of Broadway between Michigan Avenue and downtown, the district does not contain a single parking meter. The only place where you might run into a problem is in the western half of the Fruit Belt, adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Here, much to the consternation of neighborhood residents, hospital employees regularly park on-street in order to dodge the high rates at the paid parking lots. The Common Council has considered limiting on-street parking in the Fruit Belt to permit holders (i.e. neighborhood residents) only, but for now no limitations are in effect.

A few East Side business districts do have parking regulations worth mentioning. On Main Street between Hertel Avenue and Best Street — through Highland Park, Hamlin Park and most of Midtown — parking is limited to two hours every day but Sunday between the hours of 7AM and 7PM. Between Humboldt Parkway and East Delavan Avenue in the vicinity of Canisius College (and along Jefferson Avenue from Main to East Delavan) it's prohibited entirely — visitors to campus should ask for a parking permit at the admissions office in Lyons Hall and then park in the lot in front of the building, or else find a spot on a side street. Visitors to Sisters Hospital can park in the lot facing Main Street; rates are $5/day. South of Best Street, it's two-hour parking on weekdays from 8AM to 5PM.

On Bailey Avenue, parking is limited to two hours Mondays through Fridays from 7AM to 7PM between Millicent and Highgate Avenues in the Kensington-Bailey business district. In Delavan-Bailey, Lovejoy, and Kaisertown, parking is one hour everyday from East Delavan Avenue south to Lang Avenue between 10AM and 4PM, and prohibited outright south of Walden Avenue. If you're visiting these areas, East Delavan Avenue, East Lovejoy Street, and Clinton Street are all much better options than Bailey — parking on those streets is easily available and unrestricted at all times. In Broadway-Fillmore, parking along Fillmore Avenue between Stanislaus and Peckham Streets and along Broadway from Strauss Street to Memorial Drive is two hours only, everyday but Sunday from 7AM to 7PM; east of there, along Broadway from Memorial Drive to Gatchell Street, it's one hour only (same days and times). If you're heading to the Broadway Market on a Saturday in the weeks leading up to Easter, on-street parking will be hard to find, but never fear — the Market has a free ramp that, while well-used, rarely fills up completely.

Elsewhere, parking in the Cold Spring business district is limited to one hour on weekdays between 7AM and 7PM along Jefferson Avenue between East Ferry and Riley Streets, and in Delavan-Grider to two hours on weekdays between 7AM and 7PM along Grider Street from the Kensington Expressway ramps to East Ferry Street. If you're visiting the Erie County Medical Center in the middle of the week, either use the pay lot in the front of the hospital ($1/hour up to a maximum of $4/day; free for the first hour and 5PM-5AM) or park on one of the side streets on the other side of Grider, where spaces are generally easy to find.

Public transit in Buffalo and the surrounding area is provided by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA). The NFTA Metro system encompasses a single-line light-rail rapid transit (LRRT) system and an extensive network of buses. The fare for a single trip on a bus or train is $2.00 regardless of length (March 2022). No transfers are provided between buses or trains; travelers who will need to make multiple trips per day on public transit should consider purchasing an all-day pass for $5.00. Seniors and children 5-11 pay half fares.

The East Side is better served by public transit than any of Buffalo's other districts, doubtless because East Siders tend to be less well-off and are less likely to own their own vehicle than people from other areas of the city.

By bus

[edit]

The East Side is served by the following NFTA Metro bus routes:

To and from downtown

[edit]

NFTA Metro Bus #1 — William^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the AppleTree Business Park in Cheektowaga, Bus #1 enters the East Side on William Street, serving Lovejoy via North Ogden Street, East Lovejoy Street, and Bailey Avenue. Returning to William Street, the route passes through Broadway-Fillmore and the Near East Side before ending on the Lower West Side.

NFTA Metro Bus #2 — Clinton^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Bank of America Operations Center in West Seneca, Bus #2 proceeds down Clinton Street through Kaisertown, the southern edge of Broadway-Fillmore, and the Ellicott District. It then turns north from Clinton onto Michigan Avenue and continues back toward downtown via William Street, ending on the Lower West Side. Outbound trips take Clinton Street directly from downtown.

NFTA Metro Bus #4 — Broadway^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Thruway Mall Transit Center in Cheektowaga, Bus #4 proceeds down Broadway through Broadway-Fillmore and the Near East Side, with service to the Broadway Market. It ends on the Lower West Side.

NFTA Metro Bus #6 — Sycamore^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Walden Galleria in Cheektowaga, Bus #6 serves Schiller Park, Genesee-Moselle, Broadway-Fillmore, and the Near East Side via Walden Avenue and Sycamore Street. It ends its run at the Waterfront Village Apartments downtown.

NFTA Metro Bus #8 — Main^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the University Metro Rail Station, Bus #8 proceeds down Main Street through Highland Park, Hamlin Park, Cold Spring, and Masten Park, with service to all the East Side's Metro Rail stations. It ends downtown.

NFTA Metro Bus #15 — Seneca^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Southgate Plaza in West Seneca, Bus #15 serves a small portion of the Ellicott District via Swan Street, Michigan Avenue, and North Division Street before ending at the Adam's Mark Hotel downtown. Outbound trips take South Division Street to Michigan Avenue.

NFTA Metro Bus #24 — Genesee^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport in Cheektowaga, Bus #24 proceeds through the East Side via Genesee Street, passing through the Schiller Park, Genesee-Moselle, Humboldt Park, and Near East Side neighborhoods with service to Schiller Park and Martin Luther King, Jr. Park. The route ends at the Buffalo-Exchange Street Amtrak Station downtown.

Crosstown routes

[edit]

NFTA Metro Bus #12 — Utica^{[dead link]}. Beginning on the West Side, Bus #12 takes East Utica Street through Cold Spring and Humboldt Park, with service to the Utica Metro Rail Station. Turning right on Fillmore Avenue, the bus meanders its way through Humboldt Park and Genesee-Moselle via French, Kehr, and East Ferry Streets before turning northward, serving Delavan-Bailey and Kensington-Bailey via Bailey Avenue, Langfield Drive, and Eggert Road. From there, the bus turns down Winspear Avenue and passes through Kensington Heights on its way to its terminus at the University Metro Rail Station.

NFTA Metro Bus #13 — Kensington^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the University Metro Rail Station, Bus #13 proceeds down Bailey Avenue, Kensington Avenue, and Grider Street, passing through Kensington Heights, Kensington-Bailey, and Delavan-Grider with service to the Erie County Medical Center. Turning westward down East Ferry Street and from there southward on Main Street, the route proceeds through Hamlin Park, Cold Spring, and Masten Park before ending at the Utica Metro Rail Station.

NFTA Metro Bus #18 — Jefferson^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Delavan-Canisius College Metro Rail Station, Bus #18 passes down Jefferson Avenue through Hamlin Park, Cold Spring, Masten Park, the Fruit Belt, and the Near East Side before ending in the Old First Ward.

NFTA Metro Bus #19 — Bailey^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the University Metro Rail Station, Bus #19 passes down Bailey Avenue through Kensington Heights, Kensington-Bailey, Delavan-Bailey, Genesee-Moselle, and Lovejoy, before ending in South Buffalo.

NFTA Metro Bus #22 — Porter-Best^{[dead link]}. Beginning on the West Side, Bus #22 proceeds along Best Street through Masten Park and Humboldt Park, with service to the Summer-Best Metro Rail Station, Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, and the Buffalo Museum of Science. Continuing eastward along Walden Avenue, it passes through Genesee-Moselle and Schiller Park, and ends at the Thruway Mall Transit Center in Cheektowaga.

NFTA Metro Bus #23 — Fillmore-Hertel^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Black Rock-Riverside Transit Hub, Bus #23 proceeds through North Buffalo via Hertel Avenue, emerging on Main Street at the East Side's inner boundary and serving the Amherst Street Metro Rail Station before turning onto Fillmore Avenue. Proceeding southward on Fillmore, the bus passes through Highland Park, Humboldt Park, and Broadway-Fillmore, with service to Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, before ending in South Buffalo.

NFTA Metro Bus #26 — Delavan^{[dead link]}. Beginning on the West Side, Bus #26 proceeds along East Delavan Avenue through Hamlin Park, Delavan-Grider, and Delavan-Bailey, with service to the Delavan-Canisius College Metro Rail Station, ending at the Thruway Mall Transit Center in Cheektowaga.

NFTA Metro Bus #29 — Wohlers^{[dead link]}. Eastbound trips begin on the Lower West Side and proceed through the Fruit Belt and into Masten Park via High and Johnson Streets. Turning northward, the bus then continues through Cold Spring and Hamlin Park via Wohlers Avenue, Hager Street, and East Delavan Avenue (with service to the Deaconess Center via Riley Street, Humboldt Parkway, and Northampton Street), terminating its run at the Delavan-Canisius College Metro Rail Station. Westbound trips continue further down East Delavan and serve Hamlin Park, Cold Spring, and Masten Park via Humboldt Parkway and Dodge Street before rejoining the above-described route at Wohlers Avenue. Bus #29 does not run Saturdays, Sundays or holidays.

NFTA Metro Bus #32 — Amherst^{[dead link]}. Beginning at the Black Rock-Riverside Transit Hub, Bus #32 proceeds along Amherst Street through Highland Park, with service to the Amherst Street Metro Rail Station. From there, Kensington-Bailey is served via Berkshire (on westbound trips only), Bailey, and Kensington Avenues. The bus ends its run at the Thruway Mall Transit Center in Cheektowaga.

Buffalo has made great strides in accommodating bicycling as a mode of transportation, with recognition from the League of American Bicyclists as a Bronze-Level "Bicycle-Friendly Community" to show for its efforts. The East Side lags behind the rest of Buffalo when it comes to bicycle infrastructure, but it's rapidly catching up.

On each side of Humboldt Parkway, there's one dedicated bike lane from Martin Luther King, Jr. Park north to East Delavan Avenue, but past there only the southwest side has one (the other side has been discontinuous since the Kensington Expressway was routed through here in 1960). To cross the expressway by bike, you can use the footbridge next to Northland Avenue or else take East Delavan, where the bike lane on the abbreviated northeast half of the parkway continues across the overpass to the other side. South of there, still straddling the Kensington, Cherry Street and BFNC Drive each have a dedicated bike lane set up similarly to the ones on Humboldt; beginning at Jefferson Avenue, the latter side ends at Lemon Street while the former extends westward clear to Michigan Avenue. As above, there are two pedestrian bridges that cross over the expressway, one just east of Hickory Street and one between Peach and Grape Streets.

Elsewhere in the district, on Broadway there's a bike lane on each side of the street from Bailey Avenue all the way into downtown, and Fillmore Avenue has a lane on each side from William Street north to Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, with "sharrows" (pavement markings on roads too narrow to accommodate dedicated bike lanes, indicating that drivers should be aware of bicyclists on the road) north from there to East Ferry Street. There's also another connection from Broadway to Martin Luther King Park via sharrows on Herman Street. On the Near East Side, you'll also find parallel bike lanes on William Street between Michigan and Jefferson Avenues, as well as sharrows along Main Street from Humboldt Parkway out to Bailey Avenue. In Kaisertown, South Ogden Street has sharrows between Seward and Griswold Streets, continuing north of there as a pair of parallel bike lanes on each side of the street as far north as Dingens Street. Finally, in the Fruit Belt, High Street sports sharrows extending westward from Jefferson Avenue into the Medical Corridor.

Walking can be a good way to get from place to place within certain particularly pedestrian-friendly East Side neighborhoods, such as Lovejoy, Kaisertown, and to a lesser extent Kensington-Bailey. But, in general, the East Side does not lend itself well to this method of transportation. Aside from the high crime rate in many areas (a danger that's greatly amplified when the sun goes down), the distances between points of interest on the East Side are too long to effectively cover on foot. If you don't have a car or bike at your disposal, you're best off using public transit.

The emerging East Side arts community is centered on the newly gentrifying neighborhoods just east of Main Street, now home to a growing population of creative types.

• 42.919216-78.837131 Albright-Knox Northland, 612 Northland Ave. (Metro Bus 13, 23, and 26), ☏ +1 716-882-8700. F noon-7PM, Sa Su noon-5PM. Buffalo art lovers were understandably bummed at the announcement that the Albright-Knox's main campus in the Elmwood Village would be closed for two and a half years for a major expansion project, and that the museum's permanent collection would be inaccessible during that time. But that blow was softened by the news that the fire would be kept burning with a temporary satellite gallery housed in a restored warehouse in the burgeoning Northland Corridor that would play host to a full calendar of special exhibitions and events for the duration of construction. In addition to visual arts, Albright-Knox Northland also hosts performances as well as a full range of art classes suitable for all ages and skill levels; check their website for details on those. Admission is always "pay what you wish". (updated Mar 2020)

• 42.90697-78.86712 Amber M. Dixon Gallery, 1221 Main St. (Metro Bus 8, 11, 13, 22, and 25; Metro Rail: Summer-Best), ☏ +1 716-803-2605. Opening hours vary by exhibition. Artspace Buffalo is a homegrown artists' colony comprised of sixty loft apartments-cum-art studios that are home to some of the foremost emerging names in the Buffalo art community, as well as this expansive gallery space that displays works by Artspace residents and other artists from Buffalo and around the region. With a full schedule of exhibitions all year long, you never know quite what's going to be on at the Amber M. Dixon Gallery: works displayed there span a wide variety of media, from traditional formats like painting, sculpture and photography to offbeat exhibitions of collage and jewel art. There are even musical performances from time to time.  
• Gallery @ the Guild, 980 Northampton St (Metro Bus 12, 22 or 24, on the top floor of The Guild @ 980), ☏ +1 716-894-3366. Opening hours vary by exhibition. The headquarters of and sometime retail store belonging to the local purveyor of upcycles building materials, ReUse Action — is an art gallery with a purview unique to the Buffalo area, and while the temporary exhibitions they put on are not what you would call "frequent" if you happen to be in town for one, you're in for a real treat. At the Gallery @ the Guild, the focus is on so-called "restoration art": found objects from some of the same soon-to-be-demolished buildings where the warehouse store downstairs sources its merchandise are repurposed and reimagined in magnificent ways, displaying the timeworn beauty of the old craftsmanship. (updated Feb 2016)
• 42.89768-78.8609823 Locust Street Art, 138 Locust St. (Metro Bus 14, 16, 18 or 29), ☏ +1 716-852-4562. By most people's definition, what's housed in this repurposed Civil War-era convent on a residential street in the Fruit Belt is not an art gallery. Rather, Locust Street Art is best-known for offering free, professionally-taught art and photography lessons for children and adults; it's been doing so since 1959, when local art teacher Molly Bethel began giving informal painting lessons to neighborhood children in her living room. Locust Street Art has fostered the formative talents of many successful artists over the years, and has been recognized as a winner of the New York Governor's Award in 1985, as well as by the Harvard Graduate School of Education for excellence as an educational resource for economically disadvantaged communities. The best way to see the fruits of this effort are during the art shows and fundraisers Locust Street Art holds on an occasional basis, featuring the work of current students as well as other area artists. 
• 42.872091-78.813754 The Rabbit Hole Gallery, 1700 Clinton St. (Metro Bus 2 or 19), ☏ +1 716-529-3424. Tu-F 11AM-5PM, Sa 11AM-4PM. Offering an experience that's somewhat but not completely different from the rest of Buffalo's roster of small art galleries, where the somewhat insular local scene is focused on to an almost solipsistic degree, the programming at this off-the-beaten-path exhibition space in Kaisertown comprises an interesting mix of both locally-based and nationally- and internationally-famous artists. A good example of the latter is the exhibition of Romero Britto sculptures that kicked off just a month after the gallery itself opened for business; as for the former... let's just say that if you've visited Canalside and duly fallen head over heels for Shark Girl, you'll be delighted to learn she also puts in frequent appearances in the works on display here, courtesy of Casey Riordan, her creator and Rabbit Hole part-owner. (updated Mar 2020)
• 42.935905-78.8421135 Tri-Main Center, 2495 Main St. (Metro Bus 8, 23 or 32; Metro Rail: Amherst Street), ☏ +1 716-835-3366. The massive old factory building in Highland Park that was once Trico Plant #2, built in 1915 by the pioneering windshield wiper manufacturer and later used by Ford Motors to build airplanes during World War II, was reborn in 1991 as the Tri-Main Center. Intended as a mixed-use facility for offices and light industrial concerns, the building instead became an epicenter for the nascent East Side arts community, with studios, galleries, and cultural institutions snapping up a disproportionate share of the space. The prominent presence of the arts here is celebrated with Trimania, a huge biannual festival featuring live music, performances and art shows on all five floors of the building, as well as Fourth Fridays, a smaller monthly open house where studios and galleries display artists' works. The Tri-Main Center contains: 

• Buffalo Arts Studio (Suite 500), ☏ +1 716-833-4450. Tu-F 11AM-5PM, Sa 10AM-2PM (Sep-May only). With about two dozen artists-in-residence working in a diversity of different media and representative of a broad cross-section of the local arts community, the Buffalo Arts Studio provides artists from Buffalo and beyond a venue to exhibit their works — either as part of the permanent collection or through the temporary exhibitions they hold frequently — as well as affordable studio space in one of the area's premier up-and-coming arts facilities. As well, the Buffalo Arts Studio's mission to advance awareness and enjoyment of art among the community at large manifests itself in the form of art classes, mural paintings and other public art projects offered to local citizens. Donation. 
• Mundo Images (Suite 255), ☏ +1 716-598-8850. Tu-F 11AM-4:30PM, Sa by appointment. Moved to the Tri-Main Center in 2014 from its former home in Allentown, Mundo Images is run by Ann Peterson, a professional photographer, language instructor, and world traveler whose mission is to enrich the world through photography, educate young people, and raise awareness of environmental issues. In addition to the small gallery where works by Ann as well as other artists are displayed, Mundo Images also produces, and sells at local stores, greeting cards printed locally on chlorine-free FSC-Certified paper, which promotes environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial, and economically viable management of forests. Free. 

• 42.905991-78.843456 Buffalo Museum of Science, 1020 Humboldt Pkwy (Metro Bus 12, 22, 23, 24 or 29), ☏ +1 716-896-5200, toll-free: +1 866 291-6660. Daily 10AM-4PM. Located in Olmsted's Martin Luther King, Jr., Park, the Buffalo Museum of Science is in a lovely building built in 1929 by the prominent Buffalo architectural firm of Esenwein & Johnson. The emphasis of the Buffalo Museum of Science is on natural and physical sciences; items from its collection of more than 700,000 specimens and artifacts, encompassing almost every conceivable aspect of the anthropology, botany, entomology, mycology, paleontology, and zoology of Western New York and elsewhere, are on display in the Museum's galleries. The Buffalo Museum of Science also boasts interactive science studios and a National Geographic 3D Cinema and operates the Tifft Nature Preserve, 264 acres (105ha) of reclaimed industrial land in South Buffalo. $9, seniors 62+ $8, ages 2-17, students, and military $7, museum members and children under 2 free.  

• Kellogg Observatory. 30-minute viewing sessions held on the half hour, W 6:30PM-11PM. The Buffalo Museum of Science is also home to the city's only astronomical observatory. Reinaugurated in 2018 after nearly two decades of closure to the public due to needed repairs and updates, the Kellogg Observatory hosts guided viewing sessions, including looks through the restored Lundin telescope (now equipped with the latest in celestial mapping technology), helmed by the resident astronomy expert. Your visit to the observatory ends on the museum's new rooftop deck, where you can enjoy not only the "Buffalo in Space" science studio exhibit but also sweeping views of the downtown skyline. (updated Mar 2019)

• 42.878987-78.8695797 Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum, 263 Michigan Ave. (Metro Bus 14, 15, 16 or 42; Metro Rail: Seneca), ☏ +1 716-853-0084. Th-Sa 11AM-4PM. Operated by James Sandoro, a former curator of exhibits at the Buffalo History Museum and a lifelong collector of historic artifacts, the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum draws 10,000 visitors per year to their museum complex in a historic neighborhood just east of downtown, despite minimal advertising. As one might expect, the exhibits at the Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum run heavily towards antique cars and automotive memorabilia, especially Pierce-Arrows, the luxury sedans produced in Buffalo in the early 20th century to which the museum owes its name. The museum's pièce de résistance debuted in June 2014: Buffalo's seventh and newest Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building, a filling station constructed according to an original 1927 blueprint which Wright intended for the corner of Michigan Avenue and Cherry Street a short distance north of here. $10, seniors $8, children $5, guided tour $15. 

The East Side is the place to learn the story of Buffalo's African-American community — especially the place where it all began, just outside downtown on the Near East Side, where the formative institutions of black Buffalo are preserved as the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor.

• 42.885041-78.8022568 Buffalo Fire Historical Society Museum, 1850 William St (Metro Bus 1), ☏ +1 716-892-8400. Sa 10AM-4PM and by appointment. The Buffalo Fire Historical Society Museum is in Lovejoy, a blue-collar neighborhood that is home to many Buffalo firefighters. This modest-sized building houses an extensive collection of antique fire trucks, apparatus and other artifacts, and historic photographs and exhibits related to the history of the Buffalo Fire Department. The museum's mission also encompasses educating the public about fire safety and prevention, and firefighting as a career. Donation.  
• Colored Musicians' Club Museum, 145 Broadway (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-855-9383. W-Sa 11AM-4PM or by appointment. The Colored Musicians' Club is a designated Buffalo Landmark, and easily the most storied jazz club in the city — founded in 1918 as the social club of the all-black American Federation of Musicians Local 533, it almost immediately became the place to see informal jam sessions by members of Buffalo-area ragtime and jazz bands plus the world-famous elite performers of the genre. The club continues to function as a venue for live jazz, but it also contains a museum with a range of artifacts and exhibits that detail the history of the club and of jazz music in Buffalo. $10; discounted tickets for children, senior citizens, teachers, and active military. 
• 42.889932-78.8114189 Iron Island Museum, 998 E. Lovejoy St. (Metro Bus 1 or 19), ☏ +1 716-892-3084. M 2PM-6PM, Th 5PM-9PM, F Sa 10AM-1PM, also by appointment. With a history linked closely to the railroad industry that was so prominent in Buffalo at the turn of the century, the neighborhood of Lovejoy is nicknamed "Iron Island" because it is surrounded by railroad tracks on all four sides. The Iron Island Museum was opened in 2000 by the Iron Island Preservation Society and is dedicated to retelling the history of Lovejoy with a particular emphasis on the railroads that have shaped its identity. Formerly a funeral home, the Iron Island Museum's reputation for ghost sightings has attracted the attention of paranormal researchers from around the region and further afield, in addition to the television shows "Ghost Lab" and "Ghost Hunters". Accordingly, overnight ghost hunts, conducted periodically by reservation, are a popular offering of the Iron Island Museum. $2, ghost tours $5. 
• 42.886245-78.86739310 Michigan Street Baptist Church, 511 Michigan Ave. (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-854-7976. Though it no longer plays host to regularly scheduled services, the importance of the Michigan Street Baptist Church to the history of Buffalo's African-American community cannot be overstated: it's the oldest continuously black-owned property in Buffalo, in the years immediately prior to the Civil War it was notorious as a "station" on the Underground Railroad by which escaped black slaves from the South were spirited away to freedom in Canada, and it retains its prominence today as the centerpiece of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor. Historical tours are offered by appointment. $5. (updated Jul 2017)
• 42.88587-78.8665711 Nash House Museum, 36 Nash St (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-856-4490. Th Sa 11:30AM-4PM and by appointment. A Nationally Registered Historic Place that's part of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor, the Nash House Museum was once the home of Rev. Dr. J. Edward Nash, who — aside from being the pastor of the Michigan Street Baptist Church from 1892 until his retirement in 1953 — was a personal friend of such nationally-known luminaries of black history as Booker T. Washington and Adam Clayton Powell, and was instrumental in the founding of the local chapter of the NAACP and in advocacy on behalf of Buffalo's African-American citizenry in the years before the Civil Rights Movement. Today, his house is open as a museum that contains engaging exhibits and archival records chronicling the history of Buffalo's African-American community. Also, the house itself is architecturally significant as a particularly good example of the wood-frame, partially prefabricated "Buffalo doubles" that were built here by the thousands around the turn of the century. $10.  
• 42.88651-78.86819512 WUFO 1080 AM/96.5 FM, 143 Broadway (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-834-1080. Yet another component of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor, Western New York's only black-owned radio station has a history that dates back to 1948 and has served over the years as a launch pad for some of America's foremost African-American radio personalities — Frankie Crocker, Gary Byrd, and Jerry Bledsoe are only a few — not to mention the locally legendary George "Hound Dog" Lorenz, who was the first to play what was then known as "race music" on the Buffalo airwaves. Free studio tours, available by appointment, regale visitors with more of this history as well as taking them behind the scenes to see how a radio station operates.  

The Demise of Humboldt Parkway: A "Heinous Act of Urbicide" Frederick Law Olmsted had designed his share of parks before he came to Buffalo, but the system he conceived here in the 1870s was the fullest expression of his architectural philosophy to date. The whole idea of a park, according to Olmsted, was to provide such a completely wild and natural experience that visitors would forget they were in the city. The parkway, in turn, was an extension of that idea: it was a way for people to get from one park to another without leaving that bucolic setting. Olmsted's parkways were wide boulevards lined with row upon row of huge shade trees, and the East Side's Humboldt Parkway was the grandest of them all: it stretched between Delaware Park and what is now called Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, 1.8 miles (2.9 km) long and 200 feet (61 m) wide, with eight rows of elms down the middle and one on each side, rivaling the Champs-Elysées and the other grand avenues of Paris that served as its models. In short order, Humboldt Parkway became the most prestigious address on the East Side, lined with huge mansions that were the homes of the elite upper crust of the Buffalo German community. But Humboldt Parkway's glory days as the verdant heart of its neighborhood came to an abrupt halt in what author and historian Mark Goldman describes as a "heinous act of urbicide". It was the age of the automobile, and local bigwigs had planned for a major highway, dubbed the Kensington Expressway, to run between downtown and the airport — straight down the middle of the parkway. A few prescient members of the community rallied in opposition, but they were no match for the city government and the powerful business interests pushing for the expressway — and this was the 1950s, after all, before public opinion had turned against the idea of destroying city neighborhoods in this manner. By 1960, when the bulldozers arrived to uproot the beautiful century-old trees, most of the well-to-do neighborhood residents had already left, replaced by slumlords and destitute tenants. Thus Humboldt Parkway soon fell victim to the same pattern of abandonment and blight as the rest of the East Side. It was such a disgrace that, in an act of defiant disgust, prominent local architect Robert Traynham Coles bought a vacant lot on Humboldt Parkway the next year and built a beautiful modern-style house on it, designed so the entrance was in back and the rear faced the street and the highway. The house is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Despite the monumental scale of the task, there have been several proposals to rehabilitate Humboldt Parkway in one form or another. One plan, favored by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy and the state Department of Transportation, would deck over a one-mile (1.5 km) portion of the expressway, between Best and East Ferry Streets, at a price of $250 to $500 million. A disadvantage to that plan is that the deck would not be able to support large shade trees like the ones the parkway originally had, nor would the side streets that were cut off from each other by the expressway "moat" be reconnected. Another proposal, favored by the city government, would eliminate the expressway altogether and replace it with a tree-lined, ground-level urban boulevard. Some purist preservationists object to that plan because it would not be an exact recreation of the old Humboldt Parkway, though it would indeed resemble many thoroughfares designed by Olmsted for other cities.

While it's not by any means the greenest part of Buffalo, East Siders take full advantage of the parks and other open-air spaces their neighborhood has to offer.

• 42.904561-78.8431313 Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, North side of Best St. between E. Parade Ave. and Kensington Expressway (Metro Bus 6, 12, 22, 23, 24 or 29). The crown jewel of the East Side's parks is its representative in the roster of Buffalo's Olmsted network: the site of the Buffalo Museum of Science, the Humboldt Basin, a handsome rose garden, walking paths, playgrounds, picnic shelters, and pleasant greenery. Martin Luther King, Jr. Park was the first of Buffalo's Olmsted parks to open to the public, in 1872: called "The Parade" at first, it was designed to host military drills and other large gatherings, with the brightly colored Parade House as its centerpiece and Humboldt Parkway, the most magnificent of all the Olmsted parkways in Buffalo, linking it to the rest of the system. But the Parade was far from any military installations Buffalo had; to the consternation of Olmsted, the park instead became a gathering place for the Germans in the surrounding neighborhood, who disturbed his quiet pastoral vision for it with raucous oompah bands that played at the Parade House and neighborhood scamps damaging the grass with their roughhousing. To the rescue came Olmsted's two sons, the successors in his firm; their 1896 redesign curved Fillmore Avenue to discourage through traffic and added the Humboldt Basin, a lovely Lily Pond, and formal gardens. The Olmsted brothers renamed the park Humboldt Park, a name that was changed yet again in 1977 to its current one. Sadly, like most of the other elements of Buffalo's park system, the integrity of the Olmsteds' original design of the park sustained considerable damage over the course of the 20th century: the Parade House is long-gone, part of its west edge was sacrificed in 1929 for the science museum, and there's a basketball court where the Lily Pond used to be. But the greatest indignity happened in 1960, when Humboldt Parkway was torn asunder to make way for the Kensington Expressway (see infobox at right). The Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy is hard at work righting those wrongs: the Humboldt Basin has already been renovated and reopened, the restoration of the Shelter House is ongoing, and plans are afoot to recreate the Lily Pond.  

• 42.904734-78.84010414 Humboldt Basin (west side of Fillmore Ave. in center of park; Metro Bus 22, 23 or 24). The centerpiece of Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, the Humboldt Basin is a five-acre (2 ha) water feature of several functions: in the summer it serves as a "splash pad" where neighborhood kids can cool off and frolic underneath fountains of cool water that jet upwards from sprinklers embedded in the ground, in the winter it's an outdoor ice rink, and in the spring and fall it's a pleasant, peaceful reflecting pool. The Humboldt Basin was reconstructed and reopened in 2013 by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy; originally, it was part of the Olmsted brothers' 1896 redesign of what was then called Humboldt Park, an immense wading pool with a sand and clay bottom (later replaced with concrete) that had been dry and abandoned since the 1980s. 
• 42.904182-78.83823715 Martin Luther King Tribute Plaza (east side of Fillmore Ave. across from Humboldt Basin; Metro Bus 22, 23 or 24). Designed by sculptor John Wilson, the Martin Luther King Tribute Plaza was unveiled in October 1983, six years after the city made good on its longstanding promise to neighborhood residents to rename the erstwhile Humboldt Park in honor of the civil rights leader that's depicted in this eight-foot (2.5-m) bronze bust portrait. The figure is sculpted in a somewhat idealized way; in the words of the artist, it was intended to "sum up the larger-than-life ideas" of Dr. King and capture his "inner meaning" rather than simply as a lifelike representation. Underneath the bust, on the side of the low stone wall that serves as its pedestal, is a bas-relief engraving of Dr. King at the podium at his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. 
• 42.90586-78.84215616 Rose Garden (just east of Buffalo Museum of Science; Metro Bus 12, 22, 23, 24 or 29). Hidden in plain sight on a quiet pedestrian walkway right next to the science museum is Martin Luther King, Jr. Park's rose garden: a small, cozy, tree-shaded oasis that was restored by the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy where a variety of roses and other flowering plants bloom in season. (updated Mar 2015)

Of the other parks in the district, the largest ones vary widely in quality: the baseball diamonds, soccer fields, and playgrounds at 42.942444-78.82637117 McCarthy Park and 42.904419-78.80358318 Walden Park bustle with romping children and amateur sports teams in the warm months, while 42.912121-78.80288419 Schiller Park is little more than an overgrown lawn with an abandoned park shelter and derelict duck pond. Smaller parks like 42.887599-78.81192920 Hennepin Park in Lovejoy, 42.86851-78.81321821 Houghton Park in Kaisertown, and 42.888739-78.8474322 Sperry Park in Broadway-Fillmore serve as gathering places for their respective local neighborhoods.

Aside from Martin Luther King, Jr. Park, Olmsted also designed two smaller East Side green spaces, neither of which survive in their original form: 42.904875-78.85834323 Masten Park is next to the Johnnie B. Wiley Amateur Athletic Pavilion and is today completely covered with basketball courts, a baseball diamond, and other sports facilities, and Bennett Park on the Near East Side has been lost entirely (the Bennett Park Montessori School stands on its site).

For the architecture buff, the East Side's main claim to fame are the magnificent churches that pepper the landscape liberally. These palatial edifices represent styles popular in the second half of the 19th century: Gothic, Romanesque, and Renaissance Revival (with the "Polish Cathedral" style of floor plan especially common in the dense cluster of churches around Broadway-Fillmore), and serve as relics of the East Side's bygone days as home to populous and prosperous communities of Catholics from Germany, Poland, and elsewhere. While some of the churches carry on as active parishes and some have been sold off to outside buyers and repurposed for various uses, others remain vacant and deteriorating, with uncertain futures ahead of them. See the Historic Churches of Buffalo's East Side tour for more information about these architectural treasures.

Leaving aside monumental structures of the most obvious historical notability, such as the churches and the Central Terminal (described below), the preservation movement took far longer to take root on the East Side than elsewhere in the city. It was not until well into the 21st century when meaningful efforts to preserve the district's architectural heritage began, by which point many if not most of its historic buildings had already been lost. Still today, out of the 23 historic districts in Buffalo that are recognized by either the National Register of Historic Places or the Buffalo Preservation Board, only four of them are found on the East Side, despite the fact that it comprises nearly half the city's land area — and it's interesting to note that three of those (the Broadway-Fillmore, High Street, and Michigan-Sycamore Local Historic Districts) were established not proactively, in recognition of their historic integrity in a more general sense, but rather reactively, as the results of grassroots community efforts to rescue specific buildings against the already-impending demolition plans of local developers.

• 42.893381-78.83749524 Broadway-Fillmore Local Historic District. On the East Side, the designation of historic districts is generally not so much intended as a stimulus for restoration than as a preventative measure (often a last-ditch one) to forestall the imminent destruction of the historic built environment. The Broadway-Fillmore Local Historic District, an irregularly-shaped expanse of 70 acres (28 ha) centered around the corner of the two namesake streets and also encompassing the few blocks east of the Broadway Market, is a textbook example of this, chosen in part because it's a relatively dense cluster of period buildings amidst an East Side that's more and more succumbing to the plague of vacant lots. Of course the neighborhood is rich in historical and architectural importance too: the houses and commercial buildings here represent a mix of 19th- and early 20th-century styles and together tell two different stories: that of the vibrant Polish-American community that it was once at the heart of, and the devastation wrought on that community by the post-World War II trends of suburbanization and economic stagnation. Some of the most prominent ones you'll see here are the magnificent Beaux-Arts style Union Stockyards Bank (1910) at 949 Broadway, the Streamline Moderne building across the street at 950 Broadway (1940) that was home to Eckhardt's and later Kobacker's department stores, the humble but handsome Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle (1895) at 612 Fillmore Avenue, and the majestic Corpus Christi RC Church (1909) at 199 Clark Street. (updated Mar 2019)
• 42.92124-78.85172725 Hamlin Park Historic District. The United States' largest residential preservation district with a majority-black population, Hamlin Park is an attractive middle-class area that's listed on both the national and local historic registers — it's a triangle bounded by East Ferry Street on the south, Main Street on the northwest, and Humboldt Parkway on the northeast (the locally listed portion includes only what's east of Jefferson Avenue). The neighborhood is divided into two parts: the northern half is the older one, dating to about 1890, with curvilinear streets as an imitation of the Olmsted-designed streetscape in nearby Parkside. The southern half was the site of the Buffalo Driving Park, a racetrack owned by Cicero Hamlin (hence the neighborhood's name) that closed in 1912 and became a residential neighborhood thereafter, with the more-or-less gridiron street pattern that's common to the rest of the East Side. By the 1920s, the streets of Hamlin Park were filled with handsome pattern-book houses in the Craftsman, Bungalow, and American Foursquare styles, home to a population of middle-class Germans as well as Jews who migrated north from the Ellicott District. As well, in 1912, the new campus of Canisius College was built on Main Street and, over the next decades, came to dominate the northern half of the neighborhood. Today, despite the destruction of its main thoroughfare, Humboldt Parkway, Hamlin Park has preserved its historic integrity remarkably well: it has almost none of the abandonment, blight and vacant lots that plague other East Side areas. Its significance today for architecture buffs has more to do with the period streetscape as a whole rather than any individual building, though the Stone Farmhouse at 60 Hedley Place, dating to about 1850, is notable as one of only two such houses left within Buffalo's city limits. (updated Dec 2017)
• 42.900287-78.86147826 High Street Local Historic District. Located in the Fruit Belt — a neighborhood that's on the cusp of radical change thanks to the presence on its western flank of the Buffalo Niagara Medical Corridor, a huge engine of the region's emerging high-tech economy that will employ some 17,000 people when complete — Buffalo's smallest historic district comprises three properties on both sides of High Street between Maple and Mulberry Streets. The buildings that make up the district are the former High Street Baptist Church at 215 High Street, built in 1883 and now home to the Promiseland Missionary Baptist Church, a red brick church in a hybrid Romanesque and Gothic style whose stout, angled bell tower has long been a neighborhood landmark; the three-story Italianate at 195 High Street built in 1875 as home to Henry Schirmer's meat market and now the site of the High Street Deli, the oldest continuously operating food market in the city; and the 1871 Meidenbauer-Morgan House at 204 High Street, the long-vacant home of a succession of two local doctors whose planned demolition to make way for a new grocery store was the factor that spurred the historic district's creation. (updated Dec 2017)
• 42.889112-78.86695727 Michigan-Sycamore Local Historic District. This is the smallest historic district in Buffalo, at only a quarter of an acre (1,050 square meters) in area, consisting in its entirety of three adjoining Near East Side properties at the corner of Sycamore Street and Michigan Avenue (hence its name) that represent some of the only remaining pre-Civil War architecture in the vicinity of downtown, yet were under serious threat of demolition at the time the district was created. The Eliza Quirk Boarding House at 72 Sycamore is the most famous of them, built in 1848 as a boardinghouse but named for a subsequent owner, a prominent Buffalo madam; it's now being redeveloped as apartments and office space. For their part, 82 Sycamore Street (c. 1847) was a grocery store and boardinghouse owned by Theodore and Louisa Stover, and 608 Michigan Avenue (c. 1900s or early '10s) was an auto glass shop for many years; they're both vacant today. (updated Mar 2020)

Outside the realm of churches and historic neighborhoods, the premier attraction on the East Side for architecture buffs is the...

• 42.889639-78.83076828 New York Central Terminal, 495 Paderewski Drive (Metro Bus 4 or 23), ☏ +1 716-810-3210. Check website for tour schedule. All tours begin at 11AM and last approximately 2-2½ hours. Of all the magnificent train stations built in Buffalo at the height of the railroad era (when it was second only to Chicago as a railway hub), the Central Terminal was the grandest — and today it's the only one left standing. The Central Terminal opened for business a few months before the stock market crash of 1929 and served as the gateway to Buffalo for passengers on the New York Central Railroad (and, later, Amtrak) until 1979, when it was shuttered as a cost-cutting measure. The building spent the next twenty years being passed from owner to owner; by 1997, the year the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation acquired it for $1 plus back taxes, the Terminal had fallen victim to the ravages of vandalism and more than a few harsh Buffalo winters. Despite all that, it's still one of the architectural wonders of Buffalo: an Art Deco masterpiece designed by the New York City firm of Fellheimer & Wagner, the same ones who designed Grand Central Station in Manhattan sixteen years previously, with a tower that rises 272 feet (83 meters) over old Polonia, the tallest building in Buffalo outside of downtown. Today, despite the overwhelming scale of the task at hand, the CTRC has made a good deal of headway in stabilizing and renovating the building. The best way to see the inside of the Central Terminal is on one of the docent-led historical tours (which cover various areas of the passenger concourse and tower, depending on the status of the renovations) that occur once a month from May to September. But if you're not in town for one of those, there are occasional special events held inside the concourse that are open to the public (including a train show and an annual Oktoberfest celebration), and "ghost tours" in the two weeks or so leading up to Halloween are also a hit. Historical tours $15; check website for admission rates to other tours and events. (updated Jan 2017)

The East Side's calendar of annual events represents both old and new: most notably, a full schedule of summer jazz festivals at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park and elsewhere are bookended by a pair of Polish-American ethnic shindigs in Broadway-Fillmore in the spring and late summer. The most well-known festival venue in the district is the exquisite Art Deco-style New York Central Terminal on Memorial Drive, rescued from demolition in 1997 by the not-for-profit Central Terminal Restoration Corporation, who have been diligently restoring it to its former glory since then. Attending an event there is an opportunity to help Buffalo preserve one of the crown jewels of its architectural cornucopia.

• Canisius Golden Griffins, 2001 Main St. (Metro Bus 8, 18, 26 or 29; Metro Rail: Delavan-Canisius College), ☏ +1 716-888-2970. Canisius College is home to seventeen athletic teams whose games are huge draws for Buffalonians. The "Griffs" play Division I Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference basketball at the 42.920964-78.8574661 Koessler Athletic Center on Main Street at East Delavan Avenue, while outdoor sports like soccer and lacrosse are held at the 42.921329-78.8558852 Demske Athletic Complex a short distance away. Canisius' hockey team, a member of the Atlantic Hockey Conference, plays at the HarborCenter downtown. Tickets — which are affordably priced at $12 for hockey games, $10 for basketball, $7 for lacrosse, $5 for women's basketball, and free for all other sports — can be purchased at the ticket office at the Koessler Center on weekdays from 10AM-4PM. (updated Mar 2015)

• FC Buffalo, 2885 Main St. (Metro Bus 8, 18, 26 or 29; Metro Rail: Delavan-Canisius College). Founded in 2009, FC Buffalo is a member of the National Premier Soccer League. After spending the previous two years at Canisius College's Demske Athletic Complex, as of the 2015 season the team has moved back to its original home at 42.943069-78.8310073 All-High Stadium in Highland Park. Nicknamed "the Blitzers" (in honor of the locally born CNN anchor and FC Buffalo fan, Wolf Blitzer), FC Buffalo's dedication to the well-being of the Buffalo community is exemplified in their motto, "For Our City". Tickets are reasonably priced.  

• Humboldt Basin, ☏ +1 716-838-1249 (ext. 17 for ice conditions). Open M-F 1:30PM-5:30PM, Sa Su noon-5:30PM; season runs Jan-Mar. In winter months, the beautiful reflecting pool/splash pad at Martin Luther King, Jr. Park is frozen over and opened to the public for old-fashioned pond skating. The rink is open on a weather-dependent basis. Best of all, skating and equipment rental (hockey or figure skates) are both free of charge. (updated Mar 2015)

• 42.915225-78.8631064 New Skateland Arena, 33 E. Ferry St. (Metro Bus 8 or 13; Metro Rail: Utica), ☏ +1 716-882-2104. Open skate Sa 1PM-4PM & 6PM-9PM, Su 2PM-5PM. $7, skate rental $1. (updated Mar 2015)

• 42.916234-78.8072995 Kerns Avenue Bowling Center, 163 Kerns Ave. (Metro Bus 24), ☏ +1 716-892-3331. M Th 4PM-10PM, Tu W noon-10PM, F Sa 4PM-close, Su noon-close. (updated Oct 2016)

• Paul Robeson Theatre, 350 Masten Ave (Metro Bus 12, 13 or 18; Metro Rail: Utica), ☏ +1 716-884-2013. The Paul Robeson Theatre is the oldest African-American theatre in Buffalo, founded in 1968 and at the 42.911904-78.8597786 African-American Cultural Center. The 130-seat theater is inside the cultural center's headquarters on Masten Avenue in Buffalo's East Side, featuring a handful of productions each year with a special focus on the African-American experience. Among the famous personalities that have performed on the Paul Robeson Theatre's stage include Ossie Davis, Phylicia Rashad, and Woodie King, Jr. 
• Torn Space Theater, 612 Fillmore Ave. (Metro Bus 1, 4 or 23), ☏ +1 716-812-5733. Aside from being Western New York's premiere Polish-American social club as well as home to both Buffalo's oldest Polish library and one of its largest Dyngus Day celebrations, the historic 42.890083-78.8393917 Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle is also where this avant-garde black box theater has been operated since 2000 by local impresarios Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola. Torn Space Theater's production team draws on multiple different artistic media and disciplines, such as music and visual art, to present lively, imaginative, and truly original dramatic works by auteurs from around the local region, as well as innovative reimaginations of well-known existing works like Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. In addition to the performances at the Mickiewicz Library, Torn Space is unique among the Buffalo theatre community in producing site-specific works designed specifically to be performed in iconic Buffalo settings such as Canalside and Silo City. And, around Halloween, their annual Prom of the Dead art and music bash packs the house at the Dnipro Center on Genesee Street. (updated Mar 2015)

• 42.9367-78.841468 Central Park Grill, 2519 Main St (Metro Bus 8, 23 or 32; Metro Rail: Amherst Street), ☏ +1 716-836-9466. Most of the time, "CPG's" is a cozy, sedate Main Street bar & grill situated about midway between Canisius College and University Heights, serving well-prepared comfort food and cocktails to the over-25 crowd. What it's best known for, though, are the sizzling blues shows that happen every Friday and Saturday night, where local combos like Dive House Union, the Jony James Band, and the Heavenly Chillbillies strut their stuff at the center of the Buffalo blues universe. Other genres like soul, funk, jazz and reggae crop up from time to time too, and if there's no band onstage when you visit you can still get your fix with the Internet jukebox and its encyclopedic selection of blues numbers. (updated Mar 2015)
• 42.886566-78.86799 Colored Musicians' Club, 145 Broadway (Metro Bus 1, 2, 4, 6, 14, 16, 24 or 42; Metro Rail: Lafayette Square), ☏ +1 716-855-9383. Located on Broadway just outside downtown, this former home of American Federation of Musicians Local 533 (and, before that, the Charlie Zifle Shoe Store) has done double-duty as a renowned jazz club since not much later than the union chapter's foundation in 1918, made necessary when Local 43 voted to bar local African-American musicians from membership. With jazz music all the rage among the black community at the time, the union's second-floor performance space became the place to see informal jam sessions by members of local ragtime and jazz bands after their workday was finished, or on Sundays, to see them rehearse in the practice space the union provided free to its members. Soon enough, it was a venue in its own right, playing host to world-famous luminaries like Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Lionel Hampton, and more. The tradition continues today: the Colored Musicians' Club hosts big-band concerts on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, as well as Sunday afternoons followed by a legendary open jam session in the evening. And if you're interested in the club's storied history, there's also an attached museum where you can learn all you've ever wanted to know about Buffalo's jazz scene of yesterday and today. 
• 42.907611-78.85597610 The Foundry, 298 Northampton St. (Metro Bus 18 or 22), ☏ +1 716-220-8842. The Foundry is a former industrial workshop in Masten Park that now serves as an incubator for a wide range of grassroots small businesses, as well as a venue for various community-centered events and happenings. One of those events is Roc da Mic, a monthly showcase for Buffalo's underground hip-hop community. On the last Thursday of each month, local MCs, DJs, breakdancers, poets, and other artists converge to strut their stuff in a freeform open-mic extravaganza. (updated Mar 2015)
• 42.940964-78.81340811 Varsity Theatre, 3165 Bailey Ave (Metro Bus 13, 19 or 32), ☏ +1 716-364-3008. It's a story that, in many ways, parallels that of the Allendale Theatre in Allentown: built in the 1920s as a silent movie palace in a then-thriving neighborhood, by the '70s it had been reduced to showing B movies and porn before closing outright, and was subsequently rescued from the threat of demolition and resurrected as a performance venue. Unlike the Allendale, though, the rebirth of the Varsity Theatre was as a venue for live music instead of theatrical performances — and rather than a multipronged effort on the part of a diverse group of preservationists and community stakeholders, the restoration of the Varsity was the six-year labor of love of a single individual: Ibrahim Cissé, a computer technologist originally from Côte d'Ivoire who now serves as head of the Bailey Business Association. The Varsity had its grand reopening in January 2016, and now plays host to everything from hip-hop acts to gospel choirs to the Nickel City Opera. (updated Oct 2016)

The stretch of Bailey Avenue between Winspear Avenue and the Kensington Expressway is the most bustling retail district on the East Side.