12 Domedion Ave, Buffalo, NY 14211

German’s were the first major ethnic group to arrive in Buffalo during the early 1800s. The first wave of immigrants left their homeland to escape famine and revolution. Setting just east of Buffalo’s Main Street, where they practiced the trades of tanners, bakers, brewers, and butchers. In time, the Germans soon became the city’s leaders in banking, insurance and politics. The Germans were well established when other waves of immigrants (Italian & Polish) began to flood the city in the 1880s. As the German community grew, it expanded to areas in East Buffalo near Genesee Street. At the end of the Genesee Street streetcar line at Pine Ridge Road, were German owned picnic groves and band shelters. As Buffalo expanded during the 1920s, German neighborhoods were established near Schiller Park, named after Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, a German poet, historian and philospeher.