01/05/2024
From the '33' series, 2024. Buffalo, NY
“The 1.8-mile, 200-foot-wide Humboldt Parkway, connecting Delaware Park with what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Park, was Frederick Law Olmsted’s longest – and some say most beautiful – of seven 19th-century parkways he designed in Buffalo.
But, after World War II, political leaders and city planners began to envision the parkway as an expressway to transport people faster between the city, its suburbs and the airport, and reduce congestion on city streets.
The priority given to automotive travel, with little community input or environmental review, took precedence over the beauty, health and recreational benefits the parkway provided.
Construction of the Kensington Expressway, also known as Route 33, began in 1958 and concluded in 1971. It required the removal of 639 residences and 71 other buildings in neighborhoods that became majority Black, as white people, after the war, moved in large numbers outside the city limits.
The Kensington succeeded in moving cars faster, but it displaced families, severed east-west neighborhoods and collapsed East Side commercial districts after traffic migrated away.”
-Mark Sommer, The Buffalo News
