Spaulding’s Exchange, 1845

Courtesy Western New York Heritage Institute Collection

This view of the five-sided building built by Elbridge Gerry Spaulding, at the intersection of Main and Commercial Streets, provides a glimpse of the hubbub and tumult of activity that characterized lower Main Street when Buffalo was “the greatest inland immigration port in the world.” Compare this view twenty years after the opening of the Erie Canal with George Catlin’s view of the same site in 1825.