Fruit Belt, Buffalo

The Fruit Belt is a residential neighborhood in Buffalo, New York.[1] It is located adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The city has rebranded it under the upscale name of Medical Park Neighborhood, especially in official mentions.[2]

Geography

The Fruit Belt is located within the East Side of Buffalo. The neighborhood is centered along High Street running West-East and Jefferson Avenue running North-South. It is enclosed along its eastern boundary by the Kensington Expressway and Michigan Avenue as its Western Boundary, separating the Fruit Belt from the Medical Campus.

History/Culture

At one time home to over 10.000 people, the Fruit Belt takes its name from the large number of orchards the first residents planted in the area. Holding true to their previously established agrarian nature, the earliest German residents of the area planted large orchards and vegetable gardens in the area. As their numbers increased, in these orchards were laid out the present streets, the names themselves remaining as a testimony to the early nature of the neighborhood. The area remained a tight-knit neighborhood until the 1950s.Without regard for the residents, construction of the Kensington Expressway severed the neighborhood in half destroying a harmony which had existed for over one hundred years.[3]

After the destruction caused by the Kensington Expressway and decades of disinvestment by the City of Buffalo, the neighborhood rapidly declined. In recent years due to the "rebranding" of the Fruit Belt and encouragement from the City for the construction of medical campuses in the neighborhood, there has been much investment. But that influx of money and development has been focused on the demolition of the original historic architecture for brand new medical buildings. Tenant and homeowners in the neighborhood have become increasingly active as pressures to gentrify the neighborhood have increased.

Notable sites

See also

References

  1. ↑ Buffalo Neighborhoods, University at Buffalo Archived August 5, 2013, at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ↑ City Data, Named areas of Buffalo
  3. ↑ "Fruit Belt". www.buffaloah.com. Retrieved 2017-08-26.


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