Buffalo

Buffalo, in western New York, occupies a peculiar and charming position in American culture — a Rust Belt city of genuine character on the eastern shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Niagara River, famous for the chicken wings it invented, architecturally distinguished by a remarkable concentration of work by Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and H.H. Richardson, and buoyed by a civic pride inversely proportional to its modest national reputation. The Frank Lloyd Wright's Martin House Complex (the finest early Wright residential commission, fully restored) and Sullivan's Guaranty Building (one of the first skyscrapers, 1895, a proto-modernist landmark) are architectural pilgrimage sites for anyone interested in American design history. Richardson's Buffalo State Hospital, now being restored as the Richardson Olmsted Campus, is one of the most extraordinary Victorian Romanesque buildings in the country. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery (now known as the Buffalo AKG Art Museum) is one of America's finest collections of 20th-century art. Niagara Falls is 30 minutes north — the American side is excellent but the Canadian side (Niagara Falls, Ontario) gives better views. Buffalo wings were invented at the Anchor Bar in 1964 — the original is still operating. Beef on weck (roast beef on a kummelweck roll) is the other indispensable local food. Delaware Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted (who also designed Central Park) as part of a connected system of parks, is excellent. The Elmwood Village is the most pleasant neighbourhood.