We hope you enjoy your stay in Buffalo and your shopping expierence with Walden Galleria!
Millennium Airport Hotel Buffalo
2040 Walden Ave
Cheektowaga, NY
716.681.2400
Salvatore's Garden Place Hotel
6615 Transit Road
Williamsville, NY 14221
716-683-7990
Welcome to Buffalo, N.Y.!!
Buffalo. Waiting to Surprise You.
“Who knew?” We hear that all the time from visitors to Buffalo.
“I had no idea all this was here," they’ll say. "I just didn’t expect it.” Now, we know what you’re thinking: ‘That doesn’t sound like the Buffalo I’ve heard about on ESPN and the Weather Channel. Are they really talking about Buffalo, New York?’
That’s right -- Buffalo. Home of the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres . Birthplace of Buffalo wings. But there’s much more to Buffalo than football, hockey and America’s favorite bar food - and that has recent visitors to “The City of Good Neighbors” talking.
You don’t have to take our word for it, however. Listen to what the travel media has had to say. The Washington Post called Buffalo “a hip center of arts and performances.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution told its readers “the architecture treasures of Buffalo must be seen.” The Chicago Sun-Times discovered that Elmwood Avenue “bustles with night spots, cafes and shops.” Spirit Magazine said Buffalo belongs on the “short list of America’s greatest food cities.” USA Today described the “joy” of “discovering world-class attractions in a city not known as an international tourist mecca.”
Heady stuff for a city that’s gotten more than its share of knocks over the years. So what’s driving the media buzz about Buffalo?
Buffalo is authentic. When you get off the interstate and set foot in Buffalo there’s a distinct sense of place that’s reflected in the turn-of-the-century homes, in the family-owned restaurants, in the street festivals that make every weekend from May through October a time of celebration. For visitors in search of the undiscovered, overlooked and real, Buffalo comes as an unexpected surprise.
A City of Surprises
So what are some of the surprises in store for the visitor to Buffalo?
Crowds filling the nightclubs and bars of funky and fun Chippewa Street; one of the most impressive collections of modern and contemporary art in the world at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; distinctive regional dishes like beef-on-weck and foot-long charbroiled hot dogs; an opulent European style opera house at Shea’s Performing Arts Center; and an internationally acclaimed symphony – the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra – that performs in a concert hall considered one of the finest in the world.
Buffalo also has National Historic Landmarks designed by Frank Lloyd Wright) , Louis Sullivan, H.H. Richardson and other American masters; tree-filled parks and parkways lined by some of the most impressive 19th century homes you’ll find anywhere; as well as a vibrant theater scene comprised of fourteen professional companies.
Clearly, Buffalo is not what you may think. It is, as Buffalo-born playwright A.R. Gurney once observed, “both a small town and a big city” with all the warmth and charm of the former and many of the amenities and attractions of the latter.
A City Re-born
Today, a new generation is restoring Buffalo’s turn-of-the-century legacy. Many of Buffalo’s landmark buildings are being returned to their past glory and former warehouses, department stores and manufacturing plants are finding new life as offices and lofts. Frederick Law Olmsted’s parks have been reinvigorated by a forward thinking conservancy. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has a new executive director who has brought renewed energy and passion to the Gallery’s mission of collecting and exhibiting the very best of modern and contemporary art. The Burchfield-Penney Art Center, devoted to the work of visionary watercolorist Charles Burchfield, is currently building a new state-of-the-art home, the first new museum built in Buffalo in 100 years. Other cultural institutions are experiencing a similar revival. At the Buffalo Zoo, two state-of-the-art aquatic habitats have opened and work has begun on an 18,000-square-foot South American Rainforest exhibit.
Around the corner from the Zoo, in the city’s Parkside neighborhood, a $40 million dollar re-construction and restoration of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House Complex is nearing completion. Considered by many historians to be the finest example extant of Wright’s “Prairie Style,” (and the largest residential complex he ever designed), the Martin House Complex is open for tours while the construction work continues.
Buffalo is also investing in the restoration of Wright’s Graycliff Estate, located on a 70-foot cliff overlooking Lake Erie in nearby Derby, as well as the National Historic Landmark Roycroft Campus in East Aurora, a center of the American Arts & Crafts Movement.
Other investments in new visitor attractions include the Erie Canal Harbor on the city’s waterfront, just north of HSBC Arena, home of the National Hockey League Buffalo Sabres. This $50 million dollar project includes the excavation and restoration of the original terminus of the Erie Canal that linked New York City and the Atlantic seaboard with Lake Erie and the interior of the continent. It was here that Buffalo first bloomed as a city of significance and helped shape the future of a nation. The project will include a recreation of the original Central Wharf and surrounding cobblestone streets, as well as interpretive exhibits intended to bring the site’s history to life.
Elsewhere in downtown Buffalo, work is proceeding on the development of the Michigan Avenue Heritage Corridor, a new tourism destination that will highlight the city’s role as a pivotal stop on the Underground Railroad , and later as a major center in the Civil Rights Movement. Here a visitor will be able to experience the perspective of a runaway slave as they hid from bounty hunters in the basement of the Michigan Street Baptist Church. Or step into the shoes of the Reverend Jesse Edward Nash as he led the struggle for civil rights from his home – newly restored and re-named as the Nash House Museum. Across the street, the venerable Colored Musicians Club remains a safe harbor for the city’s jazz musicians, much as it has since the days when jazz legends like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald graced its stage.
The Unexpected City
So throw out those hoary clichés about Buffalo. They no longer apply. A visit to this “best kept secret” should show you why.
