I recently was looking at an antique paperweight. It usually sits upon a clutter in a kitchen counter corner.
Millions went to this largely forgotten international fair. Forgotten but for one thing. A president was assassinated. The paperweight, of which I’m quite fond, not only brought to mind the slaying, but that Buffalo, a modest-sized city, has more than its share of presidential history, good and bad. And that reminded me that Buffalo’s just along Lake Erie from Cleveland where the Republican convention is this week.
At first I thought - hey! - why not go to Cleveland along with 15,000 accredited media? Only a (former) journalist or someone equally warped could think that. Then I decided I can’t run as fast as I used to.
So, I thought instead it would be fun to head to Buffalo.
Once a day, an Amtrak train departs Toronto for New York City, pausing, if any business, in Buffalo. Rail makes it feel like a real journey, rather than just a quick jaunt by car, which, of course, Buffalo is. In fact, a car would be faster and I wouldn’t be breakfasting on an appalling, squished object the café car attendant said is a croissant with ham and cheese.
American presidential candidates (who, doubtless, dined better) used to campaign by train. It was called ‘whistle stopping’.
Here are Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt in 1932 …
… and Gerald Ford in 1976.
The last to use rail seems to have been George Bush in 2000.
Chucking my half-eaten ‘croissant’ into a bin, I console myself that, if driving, I wouldn’t be able to take in the view as we …
… cross Niagara River’s Whirlpool Rapids and into the States. My bilingual VIA ticket (Amtrak shares the service with VIA) says that I’m at the frontière, making it sound much more exotic than just the US-Canadian border.
Not long after, I’m getting off - in fact, I seem to be the only one getting off - at Buffalo’s Exchange Street Station. Exotic it ain’t.
At the time of the Pan-American Exposition, a train arrived, on average, in Buffalo every six minutes. Now, just two a day.
Buffalo once had a grand deco terminal. Its sad replacement, virtually under a freeway overpass, is plunked in weedy obscurity.
Alone and hoping a taxi will turn up, I remember notes I’d scribbled at home. According to one study, ‘Buffalo is safer than just 3% of American cities’. In fact, it has one of the States’ highest crime rates. When a taxi does arrive, the driver seems surprised to see someone waving as though he’s the rescuing cavalry.
The Lafayette Hotel opened just after the Pan-American Exposition. It was the place to stay.
However, the hotel’s fortunes declined along with the city’s. Buffalo went into a Rust Belt tailspin and the Lafayette Hotel became - no other way to put it - a drug-ridden flop house. Not now.
The Lafayette is - to use a term I find mildly pretentious - a ‘boutique hotel’, but I’ll accept it to stay where presidents, including Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, have been patrons. There are some entertaining touches.
I admire this wonderful U.S. Mail chute …
… and lobby telephone box. Don’t think it’s the original phone, but good try.
A mural (in the men’s washroom!) celebrating the Pan-American Exposition …
… and, on a sign outside, one of the exposition’s buildings and Teddy Roosevelt (as vice-president, he opened the event) advertising a Lafayette Hotel restaurant.
The rooms have exposition themes. Over my bed is the Ethnology and Archaeology Building. From a long-ago description: “In (a) section of this building San Salvador is exhibiting coins, knives, and pottery. From the same country there is a collection of human heads! The heads have been shrunk to about one-third of their original size because the bones have been removed.”
That’s really going to help my sleeping.
Downstairs, a hotel clerk hands me a city map and - unsolicited - helpfully marks where not to go. Thus armed (so to speak) I step out into the unsettlingly empty streets of downtown Buffalo. What was that report? ‘One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in sixteen’.
