Happy Dyngus Day! Another Fun Buffalo Fact!

 By HoraceClarke66

 

As our boys leave Buffalo for the first and last time, tails tucked firmly between legs, it is time to look at yet another charming feature of the Empire State's second largest city.  That is, the old Buffalo Central Terminal, seen here today looking like a hallucination on a prairie, or a set in a post-apocalyptic movie:

It sort of looms grimly over the existing Amtrak lines as you approach and leave Buffalo.  But the train doesn't stop there anymore.  

Trains are another one of those things Buffalo failed to master, back in the days when it was the City of Light and another bustling port on the Great Lakes, its docks filling up with the steamers owned by the Steinbrenner in-laws who were about to die in a freak shipwreck and leave everything to the Luckiest Family What Ever Was.  

As early as 1889 the good burghers of Buffalo, like good burghers everywhere in the U.S. of A., were saying why don't we consolidate all the miserable little, separate train stations around town into one big "union" station, and make it an architectural marvel at the same time?  (Americans used to do stuff like that back then.)

As Buffalo would have it, though, the city stalled and debated, and didn't get around to finally building its station until 1929.  But hey, things were still booming.  In fact, they were going so well that the good burghers decided to build the new station NOT downtown but 2 1/2 miles away, sure that booming Buffalo would grow into it.  

(What makes me think a Steinbrenner had something to do with that decision?)

What's more, they didn't exactly get one of the premier train station architects that in those days were roaming around the country in greater numbers than Yankees relievers.  But still, they managed to put up a station that served 200 trains a day, including maybe the greatest train ever, the 20th Century Ltd., making the water level route from NYC to Chicago in just 16 hours.  

At its best, Buffalo Central looked something like this planned restoration:

Well, that's pretty cool, right?  And what could go wrong?  In 1929?

Anyhoo, in 1979 Amtrak abandons the station, just as it does the great stations all over the country to save money and because of our inability to make incredibly small technological adjustments in rail, power, etc. 

Instead, Amtrak starts building what "foamers"—train enthusiasts, so nicknamed by the Amtrak staff that despises them and depends on them for their jobs—call "Amshaks," lousy little stations closer to downtown.  

Even though the roof actually caves in at the Buffalo Amshak in 2016, still nobody will shell out for reviving the Central Terminal, which continues to rot away.

Hey, don't laugh.  In our own city we tore down maybe the greatest train station ever built nearly 60 years ago, and have yet to build anything beyond a nice tax break for the Dolans.

There HAVE been thoughts of maybe restoring/making Buffalo's over into a popular array of shops, businesses, museums, and even a commuter train station, just as the burghers of Cincinnati—

and Cleveland—

—managed in their burgs.  But no can do.  Due to various reasons having to do with how government works in New York State and our general, technological regression as a people, some 15 years of restoration work have succeeded mainly in bringing back the station's clock:

But hey:  unlike with the Yankees, all is NOT lost.  

Buffalo has managed to hold various public celebrations and festivals out there, including the 2007 Dyngus Day festival.

What IS Dyngus Day? I hear you ask.  

Well, according to wikipedia, Smigus-dyngus is a traditional Polish holiday, celebrated on Easter Monday:  "The festival is traditionally celebrated by boys throwing water over girls they like and spanking them with pussy willows."

Which, coincidentally, is sort of what happened to the Yanks in Buffalo this week.

 

Happy Smigus-dyngus!