Hi everyone! Please check out this piece I published in the Buffalo News yesterday!
http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/my-view/jeannine-m-pitas-investing-in-east-side-will-make-city-stronger-20160320
For years I’d been driving past the Tu Hieu Buddhist Cultural Center on Buffalo’s East Side on my way to Sunday Mass at St. Stanislaus Bishop and Martyr Catholic Church. As time went by, I became more curious. A Vietnamese Buddhist temple? Right in the heart of this historically Polish and African-American neighborhood? I had to learn more.
So, one winter day, I knocked on the door. No answer. I knocked again. Just as I was turning to leave, a monk in an orange robe opened the door and invited me in. He introduced himself as Tin Tam, and we spent an hour talking. I learned that Vietnamese-Americans from all around Western New York come to meet here.
I also learned that members of this small community are eager to connect with people from different cultures and backgrounds. I left the center feeling excited to see another sign of life and growth in one of Buffalo’s most marginalized neighborhoods.
The renewal occurring in Buffalo is astounding. Every few months I see a new business or arts organization – a formerly dying neighborhood showing signs of renewal. But unfortunately, this growth is not evenly distributed.
Poverty, crime and violence remain rampant on the East Side. Derelict houses abound. The beautiful Polish-American Catholic churches – such as St. Stanislaus, which my great-great-great uncle Jan Pitass founded in 1873 – are all under threat of closure due to dwindling congregations.
And yet, there is one week each year when the East Side becomes the most bustling neighborhood in Buffalo. Thousands of Western New Yorkers come to admire its churches, to buy chrusciki and kielbasa in its historic Broadway Market, to carouse in its bars and, on the Monday after Easter, to flood its streets for the annual Dyngus Day celebration. Every Easter this neighborhood we so often scoff at and disrespect is transformed into the center of our community.
If we are willing to visit the East Side at Easter time, why not come at other times? Why not shop at the Broadway Market on a Saturday in June, or attend Mass at Corpus Christi Church, or check out one of the neighborhood’s urban farms? Why not step into a clothing store on Broadway and talk to the owners, or visit the Mashid Zakariyah mosque? Why not be curious about this community that is teeming with new life?
Perhaps the hesitation lies in our fear. Indeed, one report of a shooting or robbery on the East Side is enough to scare many away. But, as someone who has spent time in the neighborhood for years, I would urge you not to be afraid. The East Side residents I’ve met are tired of the stigma and eager for change. And in 20-plus years of shopping at the Broadway Market (not just at Easter), attending Polish-American events and coming to Mass at St. Stanislaus, I’ve never once felt in danger.
I should caution that in calling for curiosity, I do not mean that we should become gawkers. We need to overcome our fears and preconceptions and cultivate a curiosity that is driven by compassion, empathy and a genuine desire to learn from the experiences of people very different from ourselves.
We need to ask the local residents – as well as ourselves – how we might support the area and show solidarity. In this way, we will join together in making Buffalo the strong, vibrant city we yearn to see it become.
Welcome to BFA Jeannine! A very nice inaugural effort… In the early 1890’s Rev Jan Pitass decided to divide St Stanislaus Parish and form another community, and that was St John Kanty, down the road on Broadway between Brownell & Swinburne. Also, the ‘East side’ covers a very large territory, and whenever a crime is stated as on the ‘East side’, that does not mean it is in the Broadway-Fillmore area. Perhaps there should be a N. East side, a S. East side, etc.? Looking forward to more from you!!
I agree with your comment Chris. . Because basically the East side is pretty much everything East of Main Street. . South of Kensington and North of Seneca. . To the Cheektowaga town line. . So everyone hears East side. ..and just assumes it is in the Broadway Fillmore area. .
I know that Broadway Fillmore is only a small part of the East Side. I do not think that making these specific distinctions is so helpful. The WHOLE East Side needs support. I just focus on Broadway Fillmore because that is the area I know best.
My great-aunt Florence’s married name was Pitass. Unfortunately her husband died when I was a baby, so I don’t remember his first name. They had a daughter named Linda who was born in 1950. It’s not that common a surname, so I wonder if you’d be any relation to them?
My father worked for Marine Midland and began his managerial career at the Broadway Market branch. My brother and I, and the assistant manager’s daughter, were once featured on he cover of their in-house magazine The Mariner, with a photo op looking at the baby chicks in Sattler’s window at Easter.
I lived in the Broadway-Fillmore area when I was first married, from 1981-1984, on Concord St off Memorial Dr near Paderewski St. It was a decent area when we moved there & I walked it frequently, going to Pat & Ade’s corner store on Broadway closer to Kanty’s, the gas station convenience store on the corner of Memorial & Broadway, the Fronczak Library once a month to get new books, the Broadway Market (even in June), the smaller shops like D&K (Sattler’s had closed up by then), got my glasses at the optometry place almost right on the corner of Broadway and Fillmore.
It was a bit shocking how quickly the neighborhood began deteriorating during that short time span. The Broadway Market was already starting to go downhill as evidenced by how deserted it was, when it used to be a bustling place. I remember going there all the time as a kid when an aunt lived on Gibson St, and even during the week it was bustling back in the 60s. The businesses started putting bars up on the windows. The gas station was robbed a few times. The Central Terminal, where I remember going as a kid to get the Sunday paper with my father and enjoying the big buffalo statue, the giant clock, and the grandiose architecture, from where I took the train to Boston only back in 1978, seemed to have new broken windows every time I passed it. Houses were becoming more and more shabby-looking, mostly owned by absentee landlords – ours lived in Williamsville. It could’ve been a nicer flat had he put a little work into upgrades. The cast iron drain on the old clawfoot tub, which I’d bet was original to the house, let go one day. He did send a plumber to fix it, but the floor was ruined and had to be stripped back to what turned out to be concrete slab. His reaction to that was to throw a rug over it. Bad attitudes from landlords didn’t help the neighborhood.
Even when I was with my husband and/or child, I regularly received crude propositions from young men. The last straw was when I was walking down Memorial with my 4-year-old one June afternoon after a trip to the library. 4 punk kids riding bikes, who couldn’t have been more than 11-12 or so, saw that I was occupied with a small child in one hand and a book bag in the other, and doubled back to crudely *compliment* my bosom and reach out to *honk* it as they whizzed past, one by one, laughing uproariously.
My kid was bewildered, and I was upset and furious that other kids would dare to sexually assault a grown woman with a young child on Memorial Dr in broad daylight. That incident made me think long and hard about the people coming into the neighborhood, and what they were teaching their kids that they’d dare to even think about doing something like that, let alone actually do it.
I never felt that way when we lived in Kaisertown, even when I was a kid on my bike ranging far from home to go to Neighborhood House, Houghton Park, friends’ home, Cayuga Creek, just exploring. It made me realize how vulnerable and defenseless I was – what if that had been 4 grown men instead of a pack of nasty little middle-schoolers? Could I have been dragged into the overgrown grass surrounding the terminal and raped while my child watched, or worse, was hurt as well? It was a good thing these kids didn’t act beyond *copping a cheap feel* as I’m sure I couldn’t have fought off 4 of them had they tried anything else.
I’ve never had anything like that happen in any other neighborhood, before or since that incident. Being sexually harassed was just another day in Broadway-Fillmore, and I was tired of it. I’m sure that had to be up there as one of the primary reasons for *white flight*. The *Heart of Polonia* moved down the road to Cheektowaga.
My family is from the East Side. My father’s family was from Walden-Genesee, my mother’s from Broadway-Fillmore. My grandmother sold the 4-bedroom home on Wasmuth St in 1968 and within 15 years it became a vacant lot. My great-grandparents’ home on Warren St was sold after my uncle died in 1990 and the neighborhood was already a mess. He was laid out at a funeral home on Clark near Kent and buried at St Stan’s Cemetery from Corpus Christi. By the way, when my father died 2 years ago, St Stan’s refused to honor his Korean War Navy service and extend the customary military discount, so my mother went far afield to the newer St Adalbert’s out in Elma. They both went to school at St Adalbert’s, were married at the basilica, and I was christened there. My brother and I went to school in Kaisertown at Our Lady of Czestochowa, had our First Communions and Confirmations there. I even did a long-term substitute teaching position there. When the new OLC church was built, my father was the head of the building committee, procured the financing at a very favorable rate, and has his name on a plaque in the vestibule, but the pastor (who was the assistant back when I taught at OLC)refused to hold the funeral Mass there because Dad didn’t put an envelope in the collection basket every week (due to having relocated to Florida!), so there was no *proof* of him being a parishioner. My mother ended up again going to Elma to St Gabriel’s. St Adalbert’s was out of the question because of its neighborhood. I wanted to call the bishop and file a complaint against this Johnny-Come-Lately who didn’t know his parish history. I don’t wonder why the diocese is in dire straits with attitudes like these.
Wow, I went off on quite a tangent! The East Side is never going to be the Heart of Polonia again. People are point-blank afraid to venture into it. It’s safety in numbers during Holy Week, but otherwise, no. Absentee landlords and do-nothing owners of derelict properties will let the city take the houses for back taxes and then demolish them. In the interim, they turn into crash pads and drug dens. The housing stock is not being replenished.
There are thriving parishes outside of the city now, like St Gabriel’s. Resurrection, and St Bartholemew’s. The generation who lived on the East Side once upon a time is slowly dying off and soon there won’t be enough nostalgia in the world left to *save* the neighborhoods or landmarks like the Broadway Market, because no one will be left to remember them as they were, bright, vibrant, busy and bustling. They were beyond saving back in the mid-80s. Sad but true.
What unifies a neighborhood is commonality, and the East Side had that with its many beautiful Catholic churches, overflowing parochial schools, emigration from Prussia and/or Russia and/or Austria (Poland as a nation didn’t exist from 1795 through 1919, so that’s what out ancestors’ immigration papers said they were from, the countries that gobbled up Poland), Polish language and foods. At one point in time Buffalo had the settlement of the most Polish Catholics in the USA (I think it’s been overtaken by Chicago now). We live in an increasingly mobile society where people no longer never moved more than 10 miles from the neighborhood they called home (like we migrated over to Kaisertown in 1961), if they moved from it at all.
That commonality and sense of community doesn’t exist any more. 10% of Buffalo’s population are recent immigrants, many of whom don’t speak English well or at all. 31% of Buffalo’s residents live below the poverty line, the factories (*shops*) that united them long gone as Buffalo turned into the Rust Belt.
Oh, we wish people would come to us, said the Buddhist monk. That isn’t how it worked in the old days. No one sat around and waited for people to show up. There was an entire community behind those gorgeous old churches, competing for parishioners amongst the large population of Catholics, getting the word out. That made it successful. Everyone had common interests. Nowadays, not so much.
Sure, it would be nice if the city decided to *revitalize* the plethora of vacant lots on the East Side with single-family homes, like it once did on a stretch of Clinton St. Judging by the lack of it since then, I don’t think that’s going to happen. Yes, I’m a cynical pessimist. The time to *fix* the problem was back when it first started, not 30-40-50 years after the fact.