The parks of Buffalo were not “found” landscapes. They were designed spaces; funded by tax levies and bond sales, and then built by excavating, grading, draining, planting, constructing and paving; and managed by a combination of interested citizens, politicians, and professional specialists and managers. The spaces they occupied were wooded hills, farm fields, sluggish streams, city streets, and an occasional vacant urban lot or lackluster squares.
The men who brought Frederick Law Olmsted to Buffalo in 1868 to entice him to design a park to rival Central Park in New York and Prospect Park in Brooklyn were wealthy men, bankers, lawyers, industrialists and shippers. Some were born here, but most were residents of Buffalo by choice, coming to Buffalo either from elsewhere in New York or New England, or from Europe. They thought that such a park would help spur Buffalo’s rapid growth. Buffalo was at that time the state’s third largest city after the two aforementioned, with the canal and new railroads providing impetus. After Mr. Olmsted expressed his interest in the project, these civic leaders leveraged their influence both personally and via the Buffalo Board of Trade to cause first the city council, and then the state legislature, to pass the necessary Act in 1869 to establish the Buffalo Board of Park Commissioners and grant that body the right to acquire the necessary grounds, administer them and pay for them.
Once emplaced, the Board engaged the firm of Olmsted and Vaux (Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux) and, later, their successor firms, to design the parks and avenues under their control and plan their plantings. They hired, over the years, other architects to design the additional structures the parks required. They employed surveyors, engineers, and planting supervisors. They engaged contractors to construct the buildings, bridges, fences, culverts and drains, as well as excavate the lakes and ponds, move fill to areas requiring it, relocate trees, and to grade and pave the paths and carriageways.
They also provided direct employment to a force of maintenance persons to tend to the grounds, buildings and plantations; and in the early years they provided work to a sizable group of men who could find no other employment, both seasonally and during times of a distressed economy. The construction work of the lake in The Park, later Delaware Park, during the summer of 1871, provided employment to about 170 men directly, and to another 150 engaged by the contractor commissioned to construct that feature.
While Buffalo of that time had a relatively small population of African-Americans, they were rather well represented in the workforce. It is documented that contractor Isaac Holloway’s 150 man crew included at least 30 Black laborers that summer. (Unfortunately, racial prejudice manifested itself often in the city’s early days. In one notorious incident occurring in late July, 1871, a group of white rowdies attacked a group of Black workers walking home after their toils. The white men managed to escape justice, but several Black men faced trial.)
Over time, as the grounds for which the Board was responsible grew, the workforce to maintain them and build them out increased. The Board maintained its own police force. Simultaneously, the parks staff grew in capability, and more and more of the work was accomplished was accomplished without reliance on out of town experts. Even a number of the later grounds established by the Board were laid out with only a master plan from the Olmsted firm; under the guidance of Superintendent William McMillan, who was so familiar with Olmsted’s methods, the details were able to be handled “in house”.
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