Buffalo Mayor Launches Pittsburgh Inspired Preservation Plan
The Buffalo News recently reported that the Mayor of Buffalo, Mayor Anthony M. Masiello, has created a committee to devise a citywide plan for preservation that will launch with an inventory of the city’s historic buildings and recommend a broader, more community-based approach to preservation. The committee also will work on a strategy for cultural tourism and for improved relations with real estate developers.
Mayor Masiello credits this new appreciation of preservation to a new program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation which launched last June with Buffalo city hall representatives, preservationists, architects and developers visiting with members of the preservation community in Pittsburgh. The exchange was hosted by Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation and underwritten by the National Trust.
The first community exchange of this program, it took place over four days last June, with an influential group of city hall representatives, including the Mayor of Buffalo, visiting members of Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation, Pittsburgh city officials and civic leaders including Mulu Birru, executive director of the Urban Redevelopment Authority who led the visitors on a tour of the Crawford-Roberts development in the Hill. The group also met with Mayor Tom Murphy to discuss issues of urban development and the approach to preservation in Pittsburgh.
“ We are pleased that the participants in this exchange were able to assimilate valuable information and that this participation led to the implementation of a preservation plan in the City of Buffalo,” said Arthur Ziegler, President. “We enjoy learning from others and are glad to share our experiences here with them and to have such a group of leaders visit
Pittsburgh.”
Pittsburgh History & Landmarks Foundation was founded in 1964 as a non-profit preservation organization serving Allegheny County. Its purpose is to identify and preserve architectural landmarks, historic neighborhoods, and historic designed landscapes in Allegheny County and to educate people about this region’s architectural heritage and urban and landscape design history.