Old Home Week in the Old Grey Lady

David Staba’s piece about Buffalo Old Home week appears in today’s edition of the New York Times.

One visitor, Kathleen Thompson, said she was looking to return to Buffalo from Charlotte, N.C., after working as a mortgage banker there and in Atlanta for nearly 20 years.

“When I was younger, I wanted to see other places and do other things,” said Ms. Thompson, who is 46. “But now that I’m getting older, I want to come home.”

Ms. Thompson learned about Old Home Week through an intensive Internet marketing campaign waged by organizers, receiving an e-mail invitation after posting her résumé online. The event was also promoted on www.buffalorising.com, a Web site Mr. Nussbaumer helped establish, and on several regional blogs, including buffalogeek.com and buffalopundit.com.

“Buffalo has very poor self-esteem,” said Marti Gorman, one of the organizers, who lived in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as in Atlanta and Boulder, Colo., before she moved back to Buffalo last November after her daughter enrolled at Canisius College here. “There’s a disrespect for Buffalo that is unwarranted, and we’re out to change that.”

In 1907, Buffalo was the country’s eighth-largest city, a booming port connecting the frontier of the West to the cities of the East. The city’s reputation suffered because of the assassination of President William McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition here in 1901, though, and civic leaders conjured up Old Home Week as a way to brighten the city’s image, Mr. Nussbaumer said.

If the image problems of a century later lack the singular notoriety of the murder of a president, their roots spread wider and deeper.

Changes in modes of transportation and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 rendered Buffalo irrelevant as a Great Lakes port. The steel industry, an anchor of the area’s economy, all but vanished during the second half of the 20th century, and thousands of jobs were lost. Population has plummeted, to about half its peak of 580,000 in 1950.

Mr. Nussbaumer and others argue that negative perceptions, both locally and nationally, helped prevent the sort of recovery experienced in other Rust Belt cities. Across Lake Erie from here, Cleveland, for example, has attracted corporate headquarters, and visitors to attractions like the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Buffalo’s image grew even dingier after the Blizzard of ’77, which effectively shut the city and provided Johnny Carson with weeks of “Tonight Show” punch lines. Then there were the four straight Super Bowl defeats of the Buffalo Bills in the early 1990’s.

“I was taught to dislike Buffalo and to want to get out,” Ms. Gorman said.

Another organizer of the festivities was Chris Smith, who runs buffalogeek.com. He attended Thursday’s concert in a top hat, tails and white gloves, portraying the turn-of-the-century mascot designed for the week. Mr. Smith said he had lived in bigger cities for seven years.

“What those other cities lack is the sense of community you’ve got here,” he said. “There’s a sense that everybody is in it together. It’s a more solitary life when you live in Boston or Chicago.”

Mayor Byron Brown, a native of Queens, also said the city’s small-town feel drew him in.

“I came here at 17 to attend college and just fell in love with how friendly people are and how easy it is to get around,” said Mr. Brown, who took office in January. “I’ve been here ever since and I’ve never regretted it.”

Get an overall positive piece in an out-of-town paper? Great. Get an overall positive piece in the New York Times? Priceless.

Thanks, Dave.