As the days since the murder had gone by, whispered rumors had developed into a hurricane of accusation against Arthur Pennell. At last, it had made its inevitable landfall—though most would not have guessed that it would destroy both Pennells.
It’s difficult to overstate just how captivated Buffalo and the entire nation were by the news that a prominent businessman had been murdered in his own home—and of his wife’s spicy extracurricular activities.
A little before eight on February 27, 1903, Mrs. Hull (Allie’s mother) awoketo a quiet house. Ed should have long since been up and about, but there was no sign of him.
Edwin Burdick had dragged his feet for more than four years over the matter of divorcing his wife. As Ed was, like all of us, a complicated human being, he had his reasons.
Today we will begin to confront what is arguably Buffalo’s greatest unsolved mystery—the February 1903 murder of businessman Edwin Burdick in the private ‘den’ of his home at101 Ashland Avenue.
Before I begin: Check out the Wikipedia entry on ‘‘Black & Tan Clubs’, and you’ll find that Wikipedia, which is often wrong but never in doubt, claims that the first ‘black and tan club’ (a term for a nightclub or bar that welcomes patrons of any race) was Chicago’s Café de Champion in 1912.
One doesn’t have to watch too many movies set in the Victorian/Edwardian period to think that most streets circa 1880-1900 were much like this one, dark and scary in a Sherlock Holmes/Jack the Ripper sort of way . . .
I grew up first in Buffalo and then Grand Island, and yet as a kid I barely put a toe in the Lake Erie or, God forbid, the Niagara River.
Before I was born, my parents had been very nearly swept to their doom over the Falls while out on a neighbor’s boat, and they put a scare in me very early about that water.
The name of ‘Cheektowaga’ is incised upon the Robert Brighton Wall of Fame for many things: its major international airport . . . world-renowned Cheektowagyu™ Beef . . . the irresistible Walden Galleria.
But in Buffalo’s Gilded Age, the town was known mostly for its special brand of ‘perfume’, which some period wags called ‘Essence de Cheektowaga’. Namely, the sweet smell of garbage—raw and cooked.
I remember back in school that most of my classmates thought that history was boring . . . nothing but names and dates and places. Memorize it all for the test and then forget it . . .
The Inuit are said to have dozens of words for snow, and if you are from Buffalo you’ll know just how handy that kind of vocabulary could be.
Growing up, I remember soft, powdery stuff as light as duvet feathers, sharp sandpapery crystals that hurt my face when the wind whipped them up, and the soppy, slushy, grey oobleck that got my parents’ car stuck in the Jet Donuts* parking lot one Easter Sunday morning after church.
First allow me to make a somewhat heretical confession: I don’t much care for the look of the poured-concrete grain elevators—the ones whose tubular silos remind me of a giant version of the coin-changer the paperboy used to carry when I was a kid.
Beginning in 1842, the Genesee House—one of Buffalo’s early inns—occupied the corner of Genesee and Main Streets (a major stage coach stop at the time).
Forty years later, the building was enlarged and renamed the Genesee Hotel. The 1882 version is shown here in an original photo from my collection. In a slightly weird coincidence, this incarnation of the Genesee also lasted only forty years until its demolition in 1922.
What do you think of when you hear the term ‘patent medicine’? Nostrums, snake oil, or quack medicine, probably.
These days, it’s easy to throw shade on the old-time patent medicines, but in this article we shall give them their due: for laying the foundation for what we know today as ‘Big Pharma’—the giant drug manufacturers that loom so large in daily life.
Recently I acquired a large-format original photograph of the central hub of old downtown Buffalo—where Main, Pearl, and Commercial Streets intersected with the Terrace.
In the later Gilded Age, this area would be home to Police Headquarters, the Erie County Morgue, Bath House Number One (see my previous post), and a host of business and entertainment venues.
But this image was clearly of a much older Buffalo. Take a closer look.
