Historic Building

[winfield31]

My peeps tell me the bar at the corner of Miami & Chicago(?) named McBribes will be demolished this week-end........... I'm told it was a beautiful old building , approx. 150 years old & the owner wanted to try & move it but for lack of funds another "diamond in the rough" will hit the dust............sad...........

[CSense]

I don't understand why Tobe couldn't reach Mr. Crawford, all he had to do was call the police, he's a cop. Maybe Gipson is under tooo much stress these days.


City officials gave building owner William J. Crawford “ample time” to address hazards of the structure that was once a well-known hotel, Erie Canal tavern and speakeasy, insisted Permits and Inspections Commissioner Richard M. Tobe.
“He gave us no choice,” Tobe said in defending the city’s demolition order. “The building is in bad condition and deteriorating very rapidly. It’s completely exposed to the elements.”
Tobe said city officials had great difficulty in recent weeks contacting Crawford to discuss the building’s status. Crawford could not be reached to comment.

http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/buffaloerie/story/294960.html

Funny how the snooze has bad reporters, can't even dig up that Crawford is a Bflo Cop. Or at leat maybe T.J could have told him who he was.


By T.J. Pignataro NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Updated: 05/28/07 7:17 AM

Twenty years ago, Buffalo police Capt. Brian D. Marren scored the top mark on the police entrance exam.

Now, the 42-year-old South Buffalo native is trading in his badge to pursue another prestigious scholastic achievement: a doctorate in English history at the University of Liverpool.

That Liverpool. Over the pond. The birthplace of the Titanic and the home of the Beatles.

“I’ve always liked learning,” Marren said. “And if you want to study British history, you go to Britain.” Marren, long known by his friends and colleagues as a jokester who “kept things light around the station house,” will endeavor to write a dissertation that identifies the effect deindustriali zation had on the English working class in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He will retreat into three years of study comparing his theories with those posited in “a seminal work” by English historian and socialist E.P. Thompson, who penned “The Making of the English Working Class” in 1963.

The books sound big and heavy. And Marren can’t wait.

“I’ve always wanted to be a professor from back when I was an undergraduate,” he said, eager to trade the murder and mayhem of the naked city for a quiet library and a corner pub. “I’ve always wanted to do it. And it’s something I can do — I’m only 42.”

Marren, who is unmarried and one of three sons born to a working- class family, was only 22 when he became a Buffalo police officer. The 1982 Bishop Timon High School graduate had spent a couple of years working at different jobs and studying at the University at Buffalo when he took the police exam.

“I needed money. I thought it might be a pretty cool career. Cops chased me around half my life, so I figured I could too,” Marren joked.

He earned the top score on the test. When work schedules began to interfere with classes, Marren left UB. He returned in 1999, finished his undergraduate degree and then stayed to earn a master’s degree.

Marren’s lifelong ambition took a two-decade detour through the Buffalo Police Department, but many of his colleagues are thankful it did.

“He became lifelong friends with the people he worked with

closely,” said Lt. Michael A. March, partner to the rookie Marren in 1987.

Added Lt. William P. Blake, another of Marren’s old Precinct 16 pals: “He’s a loyal friend. Brian was a guy that was even-tempered, gave the average guy a break, kept the station house loose and never took himself too seriously.”

The jolly, curly-haired bloke has an omnipresent smile but a self-deprecating soul. Not only was he coaxed into an interview about his retirement, but he still blushes about the August 1991 Officer of the Month award he shared with his partner, the late Norman Appleford.

“He was a legend. Norm did all the work on that one,” Marren insists, although both were credited for chasing down and apprehending a murder suspect in an East Side attic.

A Saturday send-off party is planned for Marren in South Buffalo. He departs for Liverpool June 28. He will begin research on his dissertation in early October.

“From the time I’ve known him — 20 years — he told me [being a professor] was what he was hoping to do. Now, he’s going to achieve it. He’s going to achieve his dream. I think he’s an inspiration to all of us,” March said.

“Brian’s legacy is his education — he was always going to school,” said Sgt. William J. Crawford. “Maybe call him ‘the police professor.’ ”
Added Blake: “It dispels the myth of policemen just going to the corner bar to tell their stories after they retire.”