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Photo: Andre Carrotflower, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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 as the centerpiece of the Michigan Street African-American Heritage Corridor. Historical tours are offered by appointment.
Macedonia Baptist Church, more commonly known as Michigan Street Baptist Church, is a historic African American Baptist church located at Buffalo in Erie County, New York. It is a brick church constructed in 1845. Samuel H. Davis was the congregation's fifth pastor, helped raise money for a church building, and as a mason did much of the construction himself. He gave the welcoming address at the 1843 National Convention of Colored Citizens of America.
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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: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.