Late in the 19th Century, the long and growing list of streets and alleys in Buffalo grew to include Trestle Alley. The Common Council has a public hearing during its meeting today on demapping the street and turning it over to a growing business which sells bricks and stones from city streets.
The stub of Trestle runs across Lovejoy Street not far from Central Terminal. It’s covered in debris from road construction and…urban legend has it…the rubble of the old War Memorial Stadium, the legendary “Rockpile.” There’s plenty of rock on the site because that’s what Experience Brick & Stone sells, heavily out-of-town.
General Manager Scott Smith says it’s all valuable.
“The original property we bought was a landfill and there was a road contractor who dumped the material there. So, for us as we're removing the material and in some places it's 18-20 feet deep, what he dumped there.” Smith says, “There's all sorts of old street bricks, cobblestones, stone curbing and other materials we are literally screening out of the dirt, cleaning up, palletizing and selling. So, to anybody else, this landfill would be a nightmare. But to us, it's sort of a mine.”
There’s another side to that growing business story, from local preservationist Tim Tielman. He says it’s selling what makes up the city.
“It's absolutely nuts and it's a really graphic illustration that, to this day, despite decades of citizens wanting to save this, demonstrating the value that the powers that be, City Hall really doesn't care about retaining the very stuff that is Buffalo.”
It’s not clear how many miles of city streets and alleys still have brick and cobblestones under the blacktop. Often, a street shows off the old pavement surfaces, like the first block of Niagara Falls Boulevard, off Main Street.
Those hard surfaces were there in the days between mud streets and asphalt. Those alleys were there too, with some still heavily used today, although they are often not recognized, like the alleys Downtown servicing the rear of buildings. Cynthia Van Ness is director of library & archives for the Buffalo History Museum, which has been cataloging alleys.
“If you can bring goods and services into alleys, you don't have to use your main avenues for, say, garbage collection. So, they are often like super-functional in cities because of that ability to have both back and front access to buildings. So, your that front can be where your customers come in and you back can be where your merchandise comes in or where your garbage goes out.”
Tielman says they can be even more valuable in the era of the city’s Green Code which pushes commercial building to the sidewalk line. He says that’s why the city’s developers built them.
“They were there from the very start when Joseph Ellicott laid out the city and often it was done to facilitate people getting around, wagons, carts and what not, particularly in central areas and this is something Ellicott planned for.”
Much of the heavy merchandise from Experienced Brick & Stone goes out of town. GM Smith recognizes that can seem strange when it’s used for renovating buildings.
“We have a very robust web site and people find us that way. Most of our work is residential, high-end residential but we do a lot of streetscapes and those are the projects we enjoy the most because that material goes back into a public space where people can enjoy it. If it's in somebody's back yard, not so much. If it's in a streetscape or a park then people can enjoy it.”
Tielman points out city contracts make the bricks and cobblestones the property of contractors renovating streets, while work is underway. Smith says contractors call to get rid of the materials from streets and other projects.
“Oh most definitely. When the ADM silo was in trouble, the north wall blew down, the demolition contractor immediately called us and said: do you want the bricks?”
Long-time Buffalo Planning Board member Cynthia Schwartz says the old stone and brick adds to the atmosphere of a home.
“People love them for interiors. So, you have an authentic brick wall, whether it's in a house rehab or a restaurant. It's become a very popular building material, like old wood.”
That’s why there are so many pallets of brick and stone on top of that debris pile over Trestle Alley, mostly noticed only by people on railroad trains going by.
