How Buffalo's Grain Money Built a Row of Mansions and Then Left It to Crumble: Millionaires Row

In the late 1800s, Buffalo, New York had more millionaires per capita than any city in America, and almost none of that fortune came from something anyone actually grew. It came from grain, and from the men who owned the one narrow doorway nearly every bushel of Midwest wheat had to pass through on its way to the Atlantic. This is the story of how a handful of grain elevator owners built one of the most opulent stretches of housing in the country, Millionaires Row on Delaware Avenue, and how the exact same system that made them rich quietly engineered its own extinction. From Charles Sternberg's mansion, built for a bride he never lived to see married in, to the Watson Elevator that burned in one of the greatest fires Buffalo ever saw, to a 1932 warning almost nobody believed until it came true decades later, this is the rise and slow-motion collapse of America's most overlooked Gilded Age address.

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Resources referenced in this video:

Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Buffalo Architecture and History (buffaloah.com)
Buffalo Rising
Buffalo Stories Archives & Blog
WNY History
UB Regional Institute
BuffaloCurrent
Spectrum Local News
Discovering Buffalo, One Street at a Time
Wikipedia
WNY Heritage
43North

#MillionairesRow #buffalohistory  #gildedage  #abandonedmansions  #americanhistory