Buffalo’s Larkinville is a redeveloped neighborhood creating new history

Howard Zemsky waited five years to eat a crepe at the Swan Street Diner.

To be clear, this is not the pancake that was just placed in front of him on this sweltering June day in 2024, but rather the one he ate in October 2017, when the 1937 restaurant finally reopened in Buffalo’s Larkinville neighborhood.

But when you build a neighborhood virtually from scratch — partly by reusing heritage buildings, partly by building new ones, even moving vintage dining cars 100 miles away — you learn to be patient.

And a restaurant, no matter how beautiful, is meaningless unless there are enough people living or working in a neighborhood to support it. So when Mr. Zemsky began his development journey nearly a quarter-century ago, the idea of ​​opening such a business never crossed his mind. But when he saw the old 50-seat railcar in Newark, N.Y. (east of Rochester) a dozen years ago and its hard-nosed owner told him it might be for sale, a light bulb went off. It took another five years to finalize the purchase, completely restore the porcelain-enameled dining car to its original specifications (the Sterling Co. built dining cars in Marrimac, Mass., from 1936 to 1942), transport it and then find the right operator.

“We’ve probably developed 900,000 square feet or more here in Larkinville (but) this 1,000- or 2,000-square-foot restaurant has a hugely disproportionate positive impact on the neighborhood,” he says, devouring his 2024 crepe while his wife, Leslie, sips from a thick-walled Swan brand mug. “It’s just a gathering place. … It draws people from all over — the size and scale of it, which was so appealing from the beginning, it’s very warm and welcoming.”

The whole neighborhood, southeast of downtown and ringed by railroad tracks and Interstate 190, has a warm and welcoming feel, but that wasn’t the case when Mr. Zemsky bought his first building in 2001: the abandoned, 600,000-square-foot 1912 Larkin Co. Terminal Warehouse. In its heyday in the 1920s and ’30s, the Larkin Company, which had expanded from soap manufacturing to all manner of household goods, employed more than 2,000 people here. And to accommodate its massive mail-order business, the Terminal building was designed to allow two locomotives to pull rows of empty cars inside (to leave loaded with freight).

Walking with Mr. Zemsky today, it’s a pleasure to hear his memories of what the neighborhood was like when the 65-year-old Brooklyn native moved to Buffalo in 1981 with his family’s business, the sausage maker Russer Foods. When the company was sold, he began his career as a real estate developer.

Pointing to the now-thriving Bratts Hill restaurant, housed in a low-rise art deco garage, he describes the state it was in when the Larkin Development Group bought it: “rusted, abandoned metal panels from the old Gulf Station.” And right next door, the beautiful 1890s tavern and guesthouse at 716 Swan St., with its metal columns etched “Washington Iron Works, Buffalo, NY” framing graceful arched windows, had seen better days before it became home to the Hydraulic Hearth restaurant and brewery. The beautiful polychrome Schaefer Building at 740 Seneca St., he says, had been boarded up and left to rot. And Larkin Square, that big, beautiful public space filled with restaurant patios, pickleball courts, beach chairs and food trucks (on Tuesdays), wasn’t there until it was built and opened to the public in 2012.

But again, Mr. Zemsky said, this is a part of the city that “was not well understood.”

“It was a very wealthy and active area for many decades, but when Buffalo started to decline, it declined. Every square inch of land was occupied by buildings; there were over 20 bars and taverns from Van Rensselaer Street to Smith Street – every time we dig down to do something, we find old foundations.”

Larkin Development Group has dug in. Along Seneca near Hydraulic Street, where two-story low-rises and vacant lots once stood, sits the trompe l’oeil Millrace Commons, an 85,000-square-foot mixed-use apartment and retail complex that resembles four heritage buildings encrusted with dentil molding (and a bit of glass infill) that have been there for more than a century.

And about those shops: The Zemskys say their role as developers goes beyond building. It’s about creating an interesting neighborhood, without tacky vape shops or businesses that create too much noise for residents. “We’re looking for people who have a strong entrepreneurial spirit and a wide variety, we wouldn’t have two coffee shops here,” Zemsky says as we walk into Toasted Buffalo, which started selling toasted treats, smoothies and coffee in Millrace Commons two years ago. “Some of these retailers are having a brick-and-mortar store for the first time.”

A new story to go with the old. In the 10-story Terminal Warehouse, now called “Larkin at Exchange,” the Zemskys have plastered the walls with huge historic photographs of the neighborhood, a cartoon map of Larkinville (the name comes from a co-worker who playfully called Mr. Zemsky “the mayor of Larkinville” at a meeting and it stuck), parked a 1910 Larkin delivery truck, and displayed a diorama of Larkin’s buildings (made of wire) recently acquired by artist Kurt Treeby.

And, with the ongoing restoration of the former Larkin Employees Clubhouse (it will contain nine apartments) and rumors of a school that could be built on a large plot of land near Smith Street, even more history is in the works. Add it all up and you have an incredible legacy crafted with taste, skill, respect and incredible patience.

“I’d be lying if I said we knew what this was going to be like, but we decided to take a chance on this building,” says Terminal Warehouse’s Zemsky as he relaxes at Toasted Buffalo. “If we had followed the traditional model of the day, which was to lease half of it before we did it, we’d still be trying to lease half of it 23 years later.”

And he might never have eaten that pancake.