and Trinity (Protestant Episcopal), the Westminster Presbyterian, the Delaware Avenue Baptist, and the First Presbyterian churches.
Education.—In addition to the usual high and grammar schools, the city itself supports a city training school for teachers, and a system of night schools and kindergartens. Here, too, is a state normal school. The university of Buffalo (organized in 1845) comprises schools of medicine (1845), law (1887), dentistry (1892), and pharmacy (1886). Canisius College is a Roman Catholic (Jesuit) institution for men (established in 1870 and chartered in 1883), having in 1907 a college department and an academic (or high school) department, and a library of about 26,000 volumes. Martin Luther Seminary, established in 1854, is a theological seminary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Among the best-known schools are the Academy of the Sacred Heart, Buffalo Seminary, the Franklin and the Heathcote schools, Holy Angels and St Mary’s academies, St Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, and St Margaret’s school for girls. The Buffalo public library, founded in 1837, is housed in a fine building erected in 1887 (valued at $1,000,000), and contains about 300,000 books and pamphlets. Other important libraries, with the approximate number of their books, are the Grosvenor (founded in 1859), for reference (75,000 volumes and 7000 pamphlets); the John C. Lord, housed in the building of the Historical Society (10,620); the Law (8th judicial district) (17,000); the Catholic Institute (12,000); and the library of the Buffalo Historical Society (founded 1862) (26,600), now in the handsome building in Delaware Park used as the New York state building during the Pan-American Exposition of 1901. The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences has a museum in the public library building.
Public Institutions.—The hospitals and the charitable and correctional institutions are numerous and are well administered. Many private institutions are richly endowed. Among the hospitals are a state hospital for the insane, the Erie county, the Buffalo general, the Children’s, the United States marine (maintained by the Federal government), the German, the Homeopathic, the Women’s, the German Deaconess and the Riverside hospitals, and the Buffalo hospital of the Sisters of Charity. Nurses’ training schools are connected with most of these. Among the charitable institutions are the Home for the Friendless, the Buffalo, St Vincent’s and St Joseph’s orphan asylums, St John’s orphan home, St Mary’s asylum for widows and foundlings, and the Ingleside home for erring women. One of the most noteworthy institutions in the city is the Charity Organisation Society, with headquarters in Fitch Institute. Founded in 1877, it was the first in the United States, and its manifold activities have not only contributed much to the amelioration of social conditions in Buffalo, but have caused it to be looked to as a model upon which similar institutions have been founded elsewhere.
The first newspaper, the Gazette (a weekly), was established in 1811 and became the Commercial, a daily, in 1835. The first daily was the Courier, established in 1831. There were in 1908 eleven daily papers published, three of which were in German and two in Polish. The weekly papers include several in German, three in Polish, and one in Italian.
Government and Population.—Buffalo is governed under an amended city charter of 1896 by which the government is vested in a bicameral city council, and a mayor elected for a term of four years. The mayor appoints the heads of the principal executive departments (health, civil service, parks, police and fire). The city clerk is elected by the city council. The municipality maintains several well-equipped public baths, and owns its water-supply system, the water being obtained from Lake Erie. The city is lighted by electricity generated by the water power of Niagara Falls, and by manufactured gas. Gas, obtained by pipe lines from the Ohio-Pennsylvania and the Canadian (Welland) natural gas fields, is also used extensively for lighting and heating purposes.
From the first census enumeration in 1820 the population has steadily and rapidly increased from about 2000 till it reached 352,387 inhabitants in 1900, and 423,715 (20% increase) in 1910. In 1900 there were 248,135 native-born and 104,252 foreign-born; 350,586 were white and only 1801 coloured, of whom 1698 were negroes. Of the native-born whites, 155,716 had either one or both parents foreign-born; and of the total population 93,256 were of unmixed German parentage. Of the foreign-born population 36,720 were German, the other large elements in their order of importance being Polish, Canadian, Irish, the British (other than Irish). Various sections of the poorer part of the city are occupied almost exclusively by the immigrants from Poland, Hungary and Italy.
Communications and Commerce.—Situated almost equidistant from Chicago, Boston and New York, Buffalo, by reason of its favourable location in respect to lake transportation and its position on the principal northern trade route between the East and West, has become one of the most important commercial and industrial centres in the Union. Some fourteen trunk lines have terminals at, or pass through, Buffalo. Tracks of a belt line transfer company encircle the city, and altogether there are more than 500 m. of track within the limits of Buffalo. Of great importance also is the lake commerce. Almost all the great steamship transportation lines of the Great Lakes have an eastern terminus at Buffalo, which thus has direct passenger and freight connexion with Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee and the “Head of the Lakes” (Duluth-Superior). With the latter port it is connected by the Great Northern Steamship Company, a subsidiary line of the Great Northern railway, the passenger service of which is carried on by what are probably the largest and finest inland passenger steamships in existence. The tonnage of the port of Buffalo is considerably more than 5,000,000 tons annually. With a water front of approximately 20 m. and with 8 to 10 m. of wharfs, the shipping facilities have been greatly increased by the extensive harbour improvements undertaken by the Federal government. These improvements comprise a series of inner breakwaters and piers and an outer breakwater of stone and cement, 4 m. in length, constructed at a cost of more than $2,000,000. Another artery of trade of great importance is the Erie Canal, which here has its western terminus, and whose completion (1825) gave the first impetus to Buffalo’s commercial growth. With the Canadian shore Buffalo is connected by ferry, and by the International bridge (from Squaw Island), which cost $1,500,000 and was completed in 1873.
It is as a distributing centre for the manufactured products of the East to the West, and for the raw products of the West to the East, and for the trans-shipment from lake to rail and vice versa, that Buffalo occupies a position of greatest importance. It is one of the principal grain and flour markets in the world. Here in 1843 Joseph Dart erected the first grain elevator ever constructed. In 1906 the grain elevators had a capacity of between twenty and thirty millions of bushels, and annual receipts of more than 200,000,000 bushels. The receipts of flour approximate 10,000,000 barrels yearly. More than 10,000,000 head of live stock are handled in a year in extensive stock-yards (75 acres) at East Buffalo; and the horse market is the largest in America. Other important articles of commerce are lumber, the receipts of which average 200,000,000 ft. per annum; fish (15,000,000 ℔ annually); and iron ore and coal, part of which, however, is handled at Tonawanda, really a part of the port of Buffalo. Buffalo is the port of entry of Buffalo Creek customs district; in 1908 its imports were valued at $6,708,919, and its exports at $26,192,563.
Manufactures.—As a manufacturing centre Buffalo ranks next to New York among the cities of the state. The manufactures were valued in 1900 at $122,230,061 (of which $105,627,182 was the value of the factory product), an increase of 22.2% over 1890; value of factory product in 1905, $147,377,873. The value of the principal products in 1900 was as follows: slaughtering and meat packing, $9,631,187 (in 1905 slaughtering and meat-packing $12,216,433, and slaughtering, not including meat-packing, $3,919,940); foundry and machine shop products, $6,816,057 (1905, $11,402,855); linseed oil, $6,271,170; cars and shop construction, $4,513,333 (1905, $3,609,471); malt liquors, $4,269,973 (1905, $5,187,216); soap and candles, $3,818,571 (in 1905, soap
