Customer Reviews

Nine Nine Eight: The Glory Days of Buffalo Shopping

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One hundred fifty-two pages and seven substantive chapters catalog the growth, prosperity and edath of scores of Buffalo merchants, with the deaths accumulating rapidly since 1980.

Buffalo was once a booming, growing city, one of the ten largest American cities. Fueled first by the Erie Canal, then by Niagara's electricity, and then by the powerful industrial engines of steel, autos and chemicals, the years following World War II have not been kind to Buffalo. Long-time Buffalo residents will easily recognize the stores that once made Buffalo a shopping mecca and that now form the retail equivalent of failed dot-com companies and former Ben & Jerry flavors. Industrial decline, recessions, bad management decisions, overexpansion, undercapitalization, hubris, and urban decay all contributed to the end to such once-proud stores as Hens & Kelly's, Adam Meldrum & Anderson, the Hengerer Company, Sample, Berger's, Bell's IGA and more. Like much of the rest of the country, family-owned businesses have given way to the Wal-marts, Targets, Wegman's and other behemoths. The overall decline of business, industry and the economy in western New York makes this decay all the more sad and distressing. There appears to be no end in sight.

The disappointment of this book is that is more of a bilbliogrphy than a narrative. Short opening and closing chapters give some contect and each store's growth usually contains some personal anecdotes, quotes and history but, for the most part, "Nine Nine Eight" reads like a Sears catalog of former products. And there is apparently no light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. For more illumination, read Goldman's "City on the edge."

For any Buffalo Buffs out there, this is the product to have. I bought it as a gift for one of my older friends who enjoys the good ole days. He absolutely loves it and recalls the times when he as a child would travel by trolley to shop at many of the stores in downtown Buffalo. This is worth the purchase price!