Interesting of note is the fact that two of Buffalo's defunct businesses are pictured here; Sheafer Brewing (the white building with the red billboard) and the Mentholatum Company (immediately below). Sheafer Brewing had an elevator built right alongside the Niagara branch of the New York Central railroad and had daily shipments of grain brought in for the brewery. Notice the double set of tracks. This line had been in use since the days of the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad of the 1850s. Today, it is down to a single track line and used primarily by Amtrak.

It will be interesting to see how much more of this image will change in years to come especially when a new bridge to Canada is built. Two of the prospects include a signature bridge (which will replace the aging Peace Bridge), and a twin-span bridge which will be built next to the Peach Bridge. Either way, this view ( I'm guessing from the late 60s or early 70s) is certainly different from what was once here in the early part of the 1900s.

Old photographs would certainly depict Niagara Street along with the railroad tracks, but the I-190 would be replaced with the Erie Canal and the many small communities that lived between the railroad tracks and the Niagara River. The Barge Canal, as this section of water is often referred to today, was created by dredging out and widening the old Erie Canal. The land bank separating the railroad tracks from the Canal was used for the I-190.

For a close up view of this area, refer to