The beginnings of Broadway Fillmore Alive were forged in the latter part of 2005. I had been volunteer assisting the Broadway Market for a few years and became a parishioner at Corpus Christi Church in 2004. In the process, I started communicating with people involved with other neighborhood places or with neighborhood issues. Two people I met were Michele Johnson and Mike Miller. Michele was fighting the battle on housing issues on the east side and was a primary force in raising awareness of house flipping problems in Buffalo. Mike, a preservationist, was deeply involved at the Central Terminal and had a great love for all the wonderful forgotten buildings on the east side.
After many conversations and email exchanges, we all came to the conclusion that the neighborhood needed start promoting itself as whole. That even after the decline it suffered over the last decade or two, there were still a lot of interesting things happening in Broadway-Fillmore. The Central Terminal had reawakened, the Broadway Market was still open for business, there were all these glorious old churches still active, the Adam Mickiewicz Library & Dramatic Circle open, there were gin mills still serving drinks, and businesses operating. The neighborhood was still ALIVE. We decided we needed to start telling this to the world.
With the rise of the internet as a new vehicle to push information out to the masses, we came up with the idea of Broadway Fillmore Alive. A news and information website to tell the neighborhood’s story. And that is exactly what we did. Our first post was on 01/16/2006. Fast forward ten years and thousands of stories later, Broadway Fillmore Alive is still doing that.
Here is a picture of Christopher Byrd (me), Michele Johnson, and Mike Miller from 2006. Mike passed away in 2009. I miss him all the time. The first ten years doing this has been a wild ride. The next ten years will probably be more of the same.
Congratulations! Keep up the good work.