Elmwood Avenue carries you into Elmwood Village, in the central part of Buffalo. This is a neighborhood bounded on the south by the Allentown neighborhood; to the north it abuts Buffalo State College and Delaware Park, just beyond the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Its eastern edge is Delaware Avenue (NY 384) and to the west the boundary is Richmond Avenue, beyond which lies the West Side neighborhood.
Elmwood Village contains eleven sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and its streets carry the layered story of Buffalo life. Pause for a moment on Elmwood and imagine Bidwell Parkway — a component of Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) and Calvert Vaux’s original parkway system — once one of the city’s most prestigious addresses. Bidwell Parkway is a residential boulevard two hundred feet wide, running northeast diagonally between Colonial Circle and Soldiers Circle.
It is named for Daniel Davidson Bidwell, heir to Buffalo Banta and Bidwell Shipbuilding Co., who was active in Buffalo’s pre-civil-war militia and instrumental in organizing the city’s first Police force. Take this moment to look around at the avenue and the parkway that frame this neighborhood. Picture Bidwell Parkway, part of Olmsted and Vaux's original park system, running two hundred feet wide toward Colonial Circle.