WNY History reports:

By 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Buffalo German-Americans felt significant pressure to distance themselves from Germany and proclaim themselves "American" versus "German-American." The Buffalo German Insurance Company became The Buffalo Insurance Company in 1918. The statue of "Germania" above the entrance was removed from the building.

This is my grandfather's Buffalo. Born in the city in the 1890s to German immigrant parents, he used to tell his grandkids tales of sneaking into the vaudeville shows, music halls and dance halls downtown. He met my grandmother, an Irish Catholic orphan, at a highly chaperoned dance at one of the parish halls. With hat in hand and an innocent look on his face, he assured the nuns at the door that he was a stalwart member of another Catholic parish just across town. His Lutheran mother would have fainted at the idea.

I can imagine him and his buddies, all of whom worked at the Erie Railroad yard on the edge of town, heading over to the Family Theatre just off the square to catch a "photoplay" and the Dog & Pony Circus.

Here he is, a few years later, playing for the Erie RR baseball team out of Buffalo. Front row, second from the right. He rose up the Erie ladder and retired in the 50's as a road maintenance supervisor. He was a railroad man to the end.

It's still visible to the north. Part of M&T now.

Am I reading it right that one storefront is for “Failing Optical”? Was there ever a time when a name like that seemed like a good idea?

That formidable building left-of-center was the William Hengerer Co., Buffalo's leading department store (or at least it was a contender: unlike Pittsburgh or nearby Rochester, Buffalo wasn't much of a "department store city".) Six stories when built, as can be seen, it was soon expanded to nine ... so far, so good; but then progress takes a surprising turn: when remodeled in 1938, the top floor disappeared. Why? It's been almost a century, I think we're owed an answer.