On a Roller Coaster

1902-1939

By: Stewart Desmond

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 13 hrs and 53 mins

Publisher's summary

Main Street is “a triumph.” Erik Brady, Buffalo News.

On a Roller Coaster: 1902-1939 is the fifth book in the series Main Street: The History of Buffalo. The era is a roller-coaster ride of economic boom and bust—and mayors of titanic achievement.
At the start of the book, as the Pan-American Exposition in North Buffalo is torn down, a city of steel rises along Lake Erie just south of town—the massive new steel plant. In the business center of town, churches of Joseph’s Ellicott’s Buffalo are selling off their lots and moving north from Downtown to be closer to with parishioners. New buildings like the Shea’s Hippodrome and the Hotel Lafayette rise on the former church sites.

Over by the canal port, a Little Italy of new immigrants is forming along the river. On the East Side lies the huge Polonia of Polish immigrants, their churches and their social institutions. Then there is the wealthy German community where the Buffalo Medical Center is today. Smaller, vibrant Jewish and African-American communities coexist on the East Side.
With the arrival of World War I in Buffalo, comes swift social change, particularly in the roles of women. The start of Prohibition in January 1920 brings further social upheaval, particularly in the German community, where the ancient and honorable craft of brewer is now a crime. In November 1921 discontent over Prohibition elects brewer Frank X. Schwab eight-year mayor. Schwab rules a city of great prosperity with many new industries and a port busier than ever before.

Then comes the Stock Market Crash of October 1929 ushering in ten years of decreasing production, rising unemployment, homelessness, hunger and despair. Buffalo’s economy will not revive until the European war of the late ‘30s increases demand for products of local industries: aircraft manufacturers, steel and iron foundries, chemical and synthetics factories, automobile plants and railway trans-shippers of Midwestern grain.

As in every era of Main Street, this book recovers forgotten stories of rule-breaking Buffalonians leading roller-coaster lives: socialite Mabel Ganson Luhan; radical Dr. Anna Mogilova Reinstein; Larkin Company executive Darwin Martin; artist Julia Decker Pratt; theatrical producer Robert Joplin; pawnbroker Abram Yellen; City Hall architect John J. Wade; boxer Jimmy Slattery; Native-American Lila Jimerson; Communist Tommy Sgovio; Mayor George J. Zimmermann; and more. All were famous in their own day, then forgotten, now evoking a tumultuous era of Buffalo’s past.