Black Rock, Buffalo, New York
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Black Rock, once an independent community, is now a neighborhood of the northwest section of the city of Buffalo, New York. In the 1820s, Black Rock was the rival of Buffalo for the terminus of the Erie Canal, but Buffalo, with its larger harbor capacity and greater distance from the shores of a Canada, a recent antagonist during the War of 1812, won the competition. Black Rock took its name from a large basalt boulder along the Niagara River, which was blasted away in the early 1820s to make way for the canal.
In 1839, the village of Black Rock incorporated as a town. In 1853, the City of Buffalo annexed the Town of Black Rock. Because of its strategic position across the Niagara River from Canada, Black Rock was an important crossing place for African-Americans escaping slavery via the Underground Railroad. This heritage is celebrated with an annual Underground Railroad Re-Enactment at Broderick Park at Niagara and Ferry Streets, the site of the main river crossing before the constuction of passenger bridges.
The area's first industry was ship-building, later supplanted by foundries, manufacturing, and canal commerce. Today Black Rock is home to Rich Products, one of Buffalo' largest private employers. It also boasts some pre-annexation houses and many excellent, vacant examples of early 20th century brick and masonry industrial architecture.
In the 1870s, a railroad bridge connected the two nations at Black Rock, an engineering marvel at the time. Black Rock's station handled both passenger service and commercial transport of goods into and from Canada. Following the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, the construction of the United States's Interstate Highway system and Canada's Queen Elizabeth Highway, and the increase of commercial air travel, Black Rock first lost its passenger service and later most of its commercial freight service.
Black Rock's best-known resident was perhaps American poet Robert Creeley, who lived with his family in a converted firehouse at the corner of Amherst and East Streets from 1990 to 2003.
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