South Park

Built in 1915 on the site of South Park's Meadow, South Park is an odd little nine-hole golf course — there's seemingly no rhyme or reason to its layout, and its small size makes for a cramped, tight-off-the-tee scenario on many holes. Still, this is a pleasant course with a great pro shop and an impeccably beautiful landscape courtesy of the great Frederick Law Olmsted. The course doesn't look like much of a challenge at first glance, but don't be fooled — South Park Lake makes for a formidable water hazard on many of the holes. There's a driving range and putting green for practice, and as at Cazenovia, you can play through the course twice at a discounted rate if you want a full 18 holes of golf.

Located at South Park, the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens were founded in 1898 and today consist of several collections of plants — the Panama Cloud Forest & Epiphyte Pavilion, the Palm Dome, the Florida Everglades pavilion, the Victorian Ivy & Herb House, the Orchid House, and the Rose Garden are only a few — arranged carefully in Victorian style. All in all, 1,500 varieties of plants are displayed here to more than 100,000 visitors annually. The lovely Victorian conservatory building of the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens was designed by Frederick A. Lord and William A. Burnham, who went on to design the conservatory at the National Botanical Gardens in Washington, D.C. some years later.

Years ago, the Union Ship Canal was a pretty crowded place: it was the centerpiece of the 70-acre (28 ha) campus of the Hanna Furnace Company, founded in 1899 by the same group of local industrialists who brought the Lackawanna Steel Company to the area. Here, freighters docked and unloaded their cargo of iron ore from the Midwest to be milled into pig iron by, at the company's peak, a workforce of 800 at a rate of 3,100 tons (2,800 metric tons) per day. Like the rest of the Western New York steel industry, Hanna Furnace went belly-up in the 1980s, but the peaceful, pleasant park that's on the site today pays homage to its predecessor in a number of ways: dense groves of trees mimic the towering buildings that once lined the canal, artificial hills recall heaps of limestone and ore, its east end is anchored by a massive ladle once used to pour molten iron into molds to harden, even the pavement design of the walking paths along the canal's edge echoes the pattern of the railroads that used to be there. Ship Canal Commons also boasts over two miles (3 km) of nature trails and a lovely footbridge over the canal, and its waters are fully ecologically restored and boast aquatic plants, waterfowl, and fish such as smallmouth bass and perch. Ship Canal Commons is easy to reach by bike via the Shoreline Trail and on foot via the footbridge at the south end of Fuhrmann Boulevard, but automobile access is trickier: you have to take either Tifft Street or Ridge Road and wind your way through the industrial park.

Inaugurated in 2014, the Tifft Street Pier begins as a pleasant bow-shaped boardwalk, beautifully landscaped with greenery and space for public art installations, that leads joggers and walkers along the Shoreline Trail directly onto the shore. But the main attraction is a floating pontoon that extends 130 feet (40 m) into the water, ending in a sleekly-designed, covered observation deck with unbeatable views over Lake Erie — a perfect spot for fishing, birdwatching or just relaxing on the waterfront. There's docking space for boats at the end, too.

Straddling Cazenovia Creek in the southeast corner of the city, Cazenovia Park is most famous as the site of an eponymous 9-hole golf course that's arguably the finest in the city. More than that, though, this is a place of wooded walking paths, serene creekside views, and friendly games of pickup baseball on well-manicured diamonds. There's also a swimming pool and an ice rink. When the park was first built, the creek was dammed to create the large Cazenovia Park Lake, on the shore of which stood a pleasant, airy lodge (still in existence today as the Peter J. Crotty Casino) with charming views over the water from the veranda. Athletic fields, a carriage concourse, a bandstand, and gardens almost as extensive as South Park's rounded out the original offerings. In 1925, Cazenovia Park's size was almost doubled by the addition of a golf course to its east end; though not designed by Olmsted, the seclusion of the new portion from the rest of the park means that the divide between Cazenovia's two halves seems nearly seamless. Aside from the lake, which was drained in 1965 due to persistent problems with flooding and pollution (revealing the previously submerged Cazenovia Park Falls; see below), the park remains mostly true to its original design and is in better shape than many of the other Olmsted parks in the city.