Canal Street was the name of a thoroughfare as well as a district in Buffalo in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Originally called Rock Street, Canal Street ran parallel to and just to the west of the famed Erie Canal at its western terminus in Buffalo. The area had been the site of the original Village of Buffalo, near a Seneca Indian village on Buffalo Creek. The city eventually expanded outward from the waterfront location.
The Ca...
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Canal Street was the name of a thoroughfare as well as a district in Buffalo in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Originally called Rock Street, Canal Street ran parallel to and just to the west of the famed Erie Canal at its western terminus in Buffalo. The area had been the site of the original Village of Buffalo, near a Seneca Indian village on Buffalo Creek. The city eventually expanded outward from the waterfront location.
The Canal, completed in 1825, opened up the western United States to travelers and trade from the east coast. With it came a tremendous increase in Great Lakes freighter traffic at Buffalo harbor, and with that an influx of canal and freighter crewmen who were often paid off in Buffalo and spent freely in the bars and brothels that sprang up in the district, known variously as "Canal Street", "Five Points" "the Flats" and "the Hooks".
In the early 20th century, the district became the home of Italian immigrants, mostly Sicilian. Canal Street's name...
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