The creative reinvention of Buffalo New York
Magic Buffalo by Bunnie Reiss © Drew Brown via Buffalo & Niagara Tourism
From music and art to revived industrial relics, the creative spirit of Buffalo New York thrives in the most unexpected of places. Here’s our take on what makes this city so special.
I came for the wings, obviously. And of course, to sneak a peek at Niagara Falls flexing its watery muscles just down the road. But somewhere between drying myself off from a Niagara drenching and licking hot sauce off my fingers at a canalside bar where some guy is strumming a melody on a beat-up guitar, I’ve discovered a city with an almost anarchic creative charm. Still wearing its steel-cap work boots, sure, but dancing in them, proudly, like everyone’s watching.
Buffalo may have been built on commerce and industry and the wealth that flowed from them, but today it’s more reno rescue meets high art. Because while some larger galleries and public spaces have benefitted from grants, investment and organised redevelopment, much of the city’s creative pulse still beats in grassroots efforts by artists, musicians and creative misfits who choose to build rather than break. The result is a city where music spills out onto the streets, brushes splash colour across brick and concrete, and abandoned industrial buildings are being reborn as galleries, studios and music venues.
And I am all in!
Buffalo’s silo revival
Once symbols of industrial might, Buffalo’s towering grain silos now stand like a concrete middle finger to anyone who thinks the city’s best days are behind it.
Now being repurposed as canvases for art, backdrops for performances and festivals, and even the framework for entertainment and adventure complexes, these hulking relics serve as bold reminders that reinvention, not decline, defines Buffalo’s spirit.
Buffalo Riverworks
Buffalo Riverworks, a rundown dockyard filled with concrete silos, warehouses, and heavy machinery, has been transformed into a buzzing playground packed with everything from the towering Buffal-O Ferris Wheel to heart-pounding ziplines slicing through the air beside the brutalist towers.
In the complex, the Riverland Fun Park keeps the junior set entertained with rides like the Fun Slide, Happy Viking, Jawz Drop, and even a kids’ ropes course complete with a mini zipline. And for those craving a bit more vertical adrenaline, there’s a rock-climbing wall. Plus, there’s a VR room that offers a high-tech escape for gamers and explorers alike.
Outdoor ice skating and rollerblading in winter give way to paddleboarding, zip-lining, and boat tours once the weather warms. Throw in craft breweries, food trucks, and live music, and you’ve got a spot that perfectly captures Buffalo’s refusal to be predictable.
I’m lucky enough to take a guided stroll inside one of the abandoned silos under rusted grain funnels and through concrete caverns so cold they feel like they’ve swallowed the sun. Along the way, I spy the faded remains of artworks and am as excited as if I were discovering modern-day cave paintings. They’re not, of course. They’re left behind from an annual festival where chalk artists stake claim to the walls. And though time has faded most of the temporary masterpieces, a few seem determined to endure.
Among them, there’s a Buffalo, natch… and a startlingly detailed gothic raven. Hauntingly perfect, it is perched between concrete columns, defiantly refusing to be erased. It reminds me that even in forgotten spaces, creativity finds a way to survive.
Silo City
Just downriver is Silo City, home to a cluster of massive grain elevators and silos that stored millions of bushels of grain arriving from the Midwest via the Erie Canal and Great Lakes for shipping east by rail or boat. Buffalo was once the grain capital of the world, and Silo City was its towering cathedral. But as shipping routes changed and industry faded, the silos were left to crumble and rust. That is, until Rick Smith bought the site and began slowly, stubbornly reimagining it as a ruinous playground for artists and dreamers, with regular festivals, art installations, monthly summer poetry readings, and concerts inside and outside of the silos.
Rick is also reintroducing nature to Silo City through quiet, intentional acts of stewardship. By allowing the land to breathe again after decades of industrial suffocation, native grasses, wildflowers, and trees are reclaiming the spaces between the silos, turning concrete corridors into unexpected urban meadows. He’s also resisted the urge to overdevelop or sterilise the place, instead working with ecologists and students to restore habitat. Birds have returned. So have bees thanks to Silo City’s Elevator B Beehive project, which gave a displaced colony of wild bees a custom-designed architectural home in one of the silos. Because when you’re bringing life back to industrial ruins, why not start with the creatures that actually keep ecosystems functioning.
Nestled within it all is Duende at Silo City . Housed in a 1940s office building that once belonged to the American Malting Company, it’s now an atmospheric home for live music, experimental performance art, and bloody good beer. Duende is a Spanish word that, roughly interpreted, means a heightened state of emotion, expression and authenticity. And it fits. Because Buffalo has got duende by the keg.
Buffalo’s art beat
Nowhere is that authenticity and passion for expression clearer than in the unexpected bursts of creativity that spill out from curated exhibitions displayed in galleries into, and onto, the very bones of Buffalo.
Buffalo AKG Art Museum: a modern art mecca
I’ve traipsed through my fair share of galleries with their white walls, polite murmurs, and maybe an artwork or two by someone I’ve actually heard of. But the Buffalo AKG? She’s not like the others. The gallery, one of the first in the U.S. to boldly back modern art while the rest of the world side-eyed it suspiciously, recently had a $230 million glow-up so glam that TIME magazine named it one of its 2024 World’s Greatest Places. And rightly so. The place shimmers. Literally.
The shiny new glass-wrapped Gundlach Building connects to the stately neo-classical original via a floating bridge that feels like it was flown in from 3024. Step inside, and you’re greeted by a glittering steel-and-glass canopy that cascades down like a web.
And the art? Blockbuster! Masters like Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, and Renoir share wall space with trailblazers like Kahlo, Rothko, Pollock and Warhol, leaving my eyes doing giddy cartwheels.
Martin House: Frank Lloyd Wright’s design masterpiece
A short drive away, I’m left a little in awe by The Martin House, a Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie-style masterpiece that proves Buffalo’s design DNA runs deep. With its intricate woodwork, flowing open-plan design, and stunning art glass windows, it’s considered one of his most important works. After being nearly lost to time, the whole complex, originally made up of six interconnected buildings, has been lovingly restored. You can feel the care in every detail.
The buildings flow into each other, connected by strong horizontal lines that ground the house and draw the eye across the landscape. But Wright didn’t just design houses; he choreographed how you move through them. Narrow, almost claustrophobic hallways push me forward. Ceilings suddenly drop low to make me feel compressed, then open wide to wow and welcome me with space and light.
Even the built-in furniture is part of the act. It’s beautiful, yes, but also brilliantly bossy. And more than a century later, the Martin House still guides visitors exactly where Wright wanted them to go. I left the house with mixed feelings about that level of control, but I couldn’t deny the undeniable genius behind Wright’s design.
Art in the open: Buffalo street art
Happily, in Buffalo, art isn’t just something you see in hushed galleries or historic homes. It’s something you walk through, brush against, and occasionally find staring back at you from a random underpass. Towering murals have turned Hertel Avenue into something of an open-air gallery. This literary fangirl finds herself especially drawn to Eduardo Kobra’s jaw-dropping mural of Mark Twain and John Lewis, painted in honour of Twain’s brief career as a newspaperman in Buffalo.
Downtown is just as decorative with works like Casey William Milbrand’s iconic Greetings from Buffalo postcard mural and the utterly gorgeous Wildflowers for Buffalo by Ouzi, which adorns the side of The Sinclair building on Washington Street. The charmingly surreal presence of Shark Girl by Casey Riordan Millard, a part-human, part-shark figure located at Canalside has become another beloved symbol of Buffalo’s playful, artistic spirit.
There’s also The Freedom Wall, looming along Michigan Avenue and East Ferry Street. Painted in 2017 by local artists John Baker, Julia Bottoms, Chuck Tingley, and Edreys Wajed, this special installation immortalises 28 civil rights icons – from Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X to Rosa Parks and Angela Davis – in an unapologetic declaration of justice, resilience, and the ongoing fight for equality.
Buffalo rocks
Sound pulses through Buffalo’s veins, filling bars and breweries, and spilling out onto the streets… because this city never says no to music. The scene is a blend of alternative, indie, and punk rock, with a smattering of jazz and blues… and the odd canawler folk ditty. And honestly, that’s just about my perfect jam.
If there’s one thread that runs through it all, again, it’s authenticity. I mean this is, after all, the hometown of ‘super freaky’ funk legend Rick James and modern folk icon Ani DiFranco, who turned a derelict Gothic Revival church on Delaware Avenue into Righteous Babe HQ (aka Babeville). A multi-use facility devoted to independent art, activism and community, she once described it as “a people-friendly, sub-corporate, woman-informed, queer-happy small business that puts music before rock stardom and ideology before profit.” Perfect!
And, of course, there’s the Goo Goo Dolls, Buffalo’s alt-rock sons, who made heartache an anthem and turned rain-soaked streets into stages. I only have to mention I am blasting them in my EarPods, and half the town is my new best friend. Because the Goo Goo Dolls aren’t just from Buffalo. They’re of Buffalo. They grew up on these streets, played their first music in the city’s bars and studio corners, and never forgot where they came from.
So beloved are they that there’s a mammoth mural of the band on Hertel Avenue, keeping an eye on the action, and another, across town at 982 Broadway, borrowing that unforgettable line from Iris, ‘I just want you to know who I am,’ to make a bold statement for inclusion.
I’m no newcomer to their fanbase. In fact, I was an early adopter. Iris dropped on April 1, 1998, and by April 2, I was a diehard. Not quite shrine-to-Johnny-Rzeznik-in-my-living-room level die-hard … but if I was, it’d absolutely include a framed still from their July 4th, 2004 show at Buffalo City Hall, where Reznik, soaked to the bone, sang in a thunderstorm, water streaming down his face. You can (and should) watch it, here.
That moment is soaked into Buffalo’s bricks… 60,000 people, ankle-deep in puddles, watching their hometown heroes get pulled off stage for safety, only to charge back out, gear shorting, instruments failing, singing like their lives depended on it. The crowd sang back like theirs did too. That’s not showbiz. That’s Buffalo.
If Rzeznik is Buffalo’s voice, then Robby Takac, the Goo Goo Dolls’ bass player and purple-haired philanthropist, is the heart. He founded Music is Art, a not-for-profit festival that pours Buffalo’s soul into a single weekend every September. The event raises money for youth music and arts programs and donates instruments to schools and students across Western New York. This ensures Buffalo’s next generation of noisemakers, dreamers and misfits have the tools they need to be heard. Because in this city music isn’t just welcomed, it’s encouraged. So much so that I reckon if you stand still too long , someone will probably hand you a mic.
New York State’s best-kept secret
Just when I thought Buffalo was done surprising me, it lobs one more curveball across the water. Down at Canalside, at an outdoor bar beside an antique carousel, a local band called Yellow Jack is tearing it up with what locals call Canawler music, a rough-cut blend of canal folk, frontier fiddle and barroom stomp. Grown men are swaying. Kids spinning like tops. And me? I sit still, wrapped in the moment like it might unravel if I move. The perfect farewell from this canal-born, fiercely creative city, it is less a gig and more a mic drop.
From its bars, buzzing bees and addictive wings to the carousel dancing to Canawler music, Buffalo has earned my affection through art and authenticity. And as Yellow Jack cranks out one last tune, it hits me…
Buffalo isn’t trying to be the next big destination. It’s trying to be your favourite secret.
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An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she’s still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow.
