Before the world was introduced to the World Wide Web and the ease of searching the Internet for absolutely anything, people had to visit their local library and browse through many print books and picture books to find an image to use for art projects, homework, or just curiosity. Some larger libraries, like our own predecessors, the Buffalo Public and the Grosvenor Reference Libraries, had their own collections of images for patrons to view. Those two collections of postcards have since been combined and added to the variety of paper materials found in our current Rare Book Room here at the Central Library.
“Buffalo” postcard by W.H. Brandel, 1903
Of course, the local treasures are the 700 plus cards devoted to the city of Buffalo and places in Erie County, New York that record the changing landscape and the vanishing buildings, pastimes and businesses from our past.
Circa 1911Circa 1910Circa 1914Circa 1918
The entire collection includes over 28,000 cards from all over the world, with over half of those estimated to have been published between 1898 and 1924, based on copyright and postmark dates, as well as other clues. The images cover many subjects and geographic locations, including a variety of countries, artists’ works, historical figures, architecture, libraries and flowers. Just about anything you can imagine.
Cape Town, South Africa, Flower SellersChinatown, San Francisco, circa 1920Anchor Line Elevator, Erie, PA, circa 1905Floating Temple, JapanNice, Flower MarketFlour Girl, HaitiItalia Airship, Faenza Italy, circa 1905-10Camel Group, CairoKonigsplein, AmsterdamTerrace of the Casino, Monte CarloMotomachi Sanchome, KobeIce Bridge, Niagara Falls, circa 1912Circa 1915
Sometimes, the images are just simply whimsical, or awesome.
Missie, Berlin Zoo, c.irca1920Silvaplana vicinity, Switzerland
The release of the 1950 Federal Census through the Ancestry.com database allows us to search for not only our own ancestors, but any persons living in the U.S. during the 1950 Census of citizens. Curious about the lives of some famous authors, artists and journalists, etc. who hail from Buffalo, New York, Grosvenor Room librarians have pieced together a display of Buffalonians right outside our doors.
Display signage outside of the Grosvenor Room
Come to the Central Library and get a closer look at the lives of these Buffalonians in 1950, along with some other elements of the time period, including images, advertisements and the U.S. Geological Survey map of Buffalo and vicinity produced that same year. Take a look at where some local celebrities lived, including Rick James, Charles Burchfield, Wolf Blitzer, Lucille Clifton, Lawrence Block and Andrew J. Smitherman, among others.
The Brisbane Building designed by architect Milton E. Beebe in the Beaux Arts Classical Revival style, built 1894-1896.
Ask folks what their favorite building on Lafayette Square is and some will say “the building with the green-framed windows.” Because this building was just recommended for the State and National Registers of Historic Places, let’s consider the history of Brisbane Building.
Originally known as the Mooney and Brisbane building, this 7-story building with its signature green-framed windows was named for James Mooney, brother Henry Mooney, and James Brisbane, all real estate investors. The Mooney name was dropped after the brothers both tragically met their demise on June 16, 1910. James died of a long-term illness and Henry shot himself in the Hotel Lafayette having suffered from what may be called long-term “despondency”—likely because of his brother’s condition.
James Brisbane, a successful businessman, was born in Batavia but resided in New York City. When he died in 1918, his remains were returned and buried in Batavia. His name identifies this important Lafayette Square building but his association with it was solely as a real estate investment.
Several businesses were located in the Brisbane Building. H. Kleinhans & Company, a clothier, was one of the original and better known tenants. Kleinhans’ occupied the basement along with half of the first floor and the entire second floor. The store itself outlasted the Kleinhans brothers who were gone by 1934. Corporately purchased in 1967, Kleinhans became Kleinhart Clothing Co., Inc. and finally Hartmarx, Inc. closing the Brisbane store in 1992. When Edward Kleinhans died in 1934, he left a million dollars for the construction of a music hall thus—Kleinhans Music Hall.
Other tenants included the S[eymour].H. Knox Store, later known as Woolworth’s (1888-1997), a five and ten cent store (where Rainbow is now located) and Faxon, Williams, & Faxon (1897-1908), one of the most prominent grocers in Western New York. Faxon, Williams & Faxon had occupied space in the Arcade, the building preceding the Brisbane on the same spot. The legacy of Knox’s success in business can be seen in the Albright Knox Art Gallery and Knox Farm State Park.
Grandson of Abel Beebe an early settler of Buffalo, Milton Earl Beebe (1840 – 1922) was a carpenter and became an architect after serving in the Civil War. Milton E. Beebe and Son [Henry Beebe] was a very successful architectural firm designing many commercial buildings, churches and homes in Buffalo and beyond. He and his first wife resided in Fredonia until 1898 when, without notice to anyone, including his wife, he mysteriously disappeared severing all ties with Western New York. Beebe later turned up in North Dakota having remarried in 1899.
With the recent opening of the Buffalo Film Works Studio on Babcock St., the largest production stage in upstate New York, easily capable of handling large, Marvel sized blockbuster productions, and the re-opening (boldly, considering most drive-in theaters have closed throughout the country) of the Dunkirk drive-in theater, it felt appropriate to remind Buffalonians that our history with motion pictures goes all the way back to its nascency. While our city has hosted numerous, well known film productions throughout the years, from The Natural (1984) to The Savages (2007), Marshall (2017), and Nightmare Alley (2021) amongst others, it may surprise you to learn that Buffalo lays claim to opening the very first theater solely dedicated to screening movies.
Buffalo Morning Express 10-19-1896 p. 12
In the beginning, movies were either used to keep audiences occupied during the interludes of vaudeville and theater acts, or served as mere “peep-show” entertainments to be consumed in penny arcades. But Mitchel Mark, who came to be known as the “Buffalo Movie King,” realized the potential of the art form and, after traveling through Europe developing connections that would guarantee a steady influx of films to screen, opened the first movie theater, Vitascope Hall, in the basement of the Ellicott Square building in Buffalo, NY in October of 1896.
Buffalo Illustrated Express 10-18-1896 p. 5
Films up to this point were only about thirty seconds to a minute long and tended to depict documentary-like scenes and scenarios. While fictional or dramatic sequences had already been filmed by 1896, the, arguably, first true narrative film wouldn’t be released until 1902 with George Melies’ A Trip to the Moon. Perhaps due to these limitations, the opening of Vitascope Hall did not receive a lot of attention from the press. While the Buffalo Daily Courier listed it’s hours of operation along with other theaters in the city, only the Buffalo Illustrated Express dedicated a column to its opening. This makes it difficult to believe Mark’s statement that 200,000 people attended his screenings in the first year of operation alone. Then again, the theater was open for almost twelve hours a day, conceivably screening films (albeit the same ones repeatedly) a couple hundred times per day, so the numbers could potentially be fudged to support his claim. Regardless, the fact remains he was a pioneer in the movie theater industry and, because Buffalo was a bustling city and well located geographically, Mark was able to create and foster a film exchange hub with the international film company, Pathe. Mark would import films and distribute them to surrounding cities, sustaining and increasing our country’s love of cinema. He also played an impactful role in pushing the industry to treat film as a serious art form, thus elevating movies to the status they hold today, far above the dredges of simple filler they formerly occupied.
Read more about Mitchel Mark and other famous Buffalo figures in Rich Falkowski’s book Take a look at behind the scenes production photos of various Buffalo locations used in Guillermo Del Toro’s Nightmare Alley.
By 1906, Mark would leave Buffalo for New York City to open the famous line of Strand Theaters. He died suddenly of blood poisoning in 1918 and was buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery here in Buffalo. An interesting side note: his daughter, Winifred, would marry Aubrey Lownes Jr. and their child, Victor Lownes III would go on, in 1954, to meet Hugh Hefner and eventually become the promotions manager for Playboy Magazine, start the Playboy Club, develop the Playboy Jazz Festival, and executive produce the first Monty Python movie. He too is buried in the Mark Family mausoleum in Forest Lawn.
The Grosvenor Room: Genealogy, Local History, Maps, Music & Rare Books 