The Fruit Belt (Medical Park) is a Buffalo, New York, residential neighborhood. It is located adjacent to the Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. The Fruit Belt is situated on the East Side of Buffalo. The area is centered along High Street, running west-east, and Jefferson Avenue, running north–to south. It is enclosed along its eastern boundary by the Kensington Expressway and Michigan Avenue as its Western Boundary, separating the Fruit Belt from the Medical Campus.
History and Culture
Fruit Belt history is Buffalo history and, as such, is American history. From the beginnings of the native Six Nations civilization to European exploration and settlement, including black African heritage from the early days of Buffalo to now, the Fruit Belt encompasses the American story through its people and architecture. With its 1835 street grid layout and street names that remain relatively unchanged spanning three centuries, the Fruit Belt and its people have a history of celebrating and a future to nurture. Fruit Belt history illustrates American ethnic, racial, and religious history through its changing settlement. Its social history documents much of what is exceptional and shameful in American history and life. The people of the Fruit Belt persist; and what binds the Fruit Belt and those with roots on the evocative street names of fruits, flowers, and trees, is that it is a place of community built through work, play, learning, love, worship, commerce, and resistance. Bed Bug Exterminator Buffalo
At one time, home to over 10,000 people, the Fruit Belt took its name from many orchards German immigrant settlers planted in the area. Holding to their previously established agrarian nature, they grew large orchards and vegetable gardens in the area. As their numbers increased, in these orchards were laid out the present streets, the names themselves remaining as a testimony to the early nature of the neighborhood. The area remained a tight-knit neighborhood until the 1950s. Without regard for the residents, the construction of the Kensington Expressway severed the community in half, destroying a harmony that had existed for over one hundred years.
After the destruction caused by the Kensington Expressway and decades of disinvestment by the City of Buffalo, NYC, the neighborhood rapidly declined. In recent years, there has been much investment due to rebranding as Medical Park and encouragement from Buffalo for the construction of medical campuses in the area. But that influx of money and development has been focused on demolishing older houses dating back to the 1800s for new medical buildings to employ surrounding residents. Tenants and homeowners in the neighborhood have become increasingly active as pressures to reinvigorate the neighborhood have increased.
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