Central Park Grill

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.