Buffalo

Lia and I came to Buffalo mostly as a stop on the way to Niagara Falls, which is exactly the mistake everyone makes, and we corrected it fast. Our first evening we walked into a corner tavern where a man at the bar heard our accents and insisted we understand — with real solemnity — the difference between a proper Buffalo wing and everything else pretending to be one. He bought us a plate to prove it. He was right, and something about that generosity set the tone for three days I didn’t expect to remember so fondly.

A city built by grain and steel

Buffalo was once one of the richest cities in America, and the wealth left extraordinary things behind. We stood beneath Louis Sullivan’s Guaranty Building, its terracotta skin crawling with intricate ornament, and craned our necks like tourists at a cathedral. Down by the river, the old grain elevators — hulking concrete cylinders that once fed the nation — now house breweries and light shows at Silo City, and we drank a beer in the shadow of one as swallows wheeled overhead. Lia kept saying it looked like the ruins of some industrial Rome, and she wasn’t wrong. There’s grandeur here, weathered but unbowed.

Wright, and the water

The reason serious travelers come to Buffalo is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin Martin House, and it deserves the pilgrimage. We took the tour through its long, low horizontal lines and its stained-glass windows — the “Tree of Life” pattern repeated hundreds of times — and I understood for the first time what people mean when they call his work music made solid. Afterward we drove down to Canalside, the reclaimed waterfront where the old Erie Canal terminus has become a place for families and paddle-boarders. The lake stretched flat and silver, and a ferry moaned somewhere out on the water.

The wings, honestly

I have to talk about the wings, because Buffalo would never forgive me otherwise. We made the pilgrimage to the Anchor Bar, birthplace of the thing in 1964, and yes it’s touristy, and yes we loved it — but the wings that undid me were at a nameless neighborhood spot in the Elmwood Village, ordered “medium” and served with celery and blue cheese by a waitress who called us both “hon.” Lia, who claims not to like spicy food, ate more than I did. We walked the tree-lined streets of Elmwood afterward, past bookshops and bakeries, letting the heat fade, entirely content.

Getting There

Buffalo Niagara International Airport lies about twenty minutes east of downtown and is small enough to move through quickly — we were in a rental car and gone within half an hour of landing. If you’re coming from Toronto, it’s a scenic two-hour drive around the lake, border crossing included; from New York City, the train is a long but lovely run up the Hudson and across the state. Downtown, the free Metro Rail runs the length of Main Street, which handles most of the core, but you’ll want a car to reach the Darwin Martin House, Silo City, and the wing joints scattered through the neighborhoods. And of course Niagara Falls is only twenty minutes north — go, but don’t let it be the only reason you came.