The Central Wharf, 1868

Courtesy Western New York Heritage Institute Collection

The Central Wharf was a picturesque thousand-foot-long row of contiguous three and four story buildings fronting on the Buffalo River between the foot of Main Street and the Commercial Slip. At the dock level, they were wholesale warehouses; at the upper level, they housed every manner of business office — connected together by galleries and verandas. Large glass areas provided grand vistas of the harbor activity from the interior of the Board of Trade. In this photo the first steam canal boat, the William Newman, begins her first trip on the Erie Canal.