Delaware Avenue, Court Street, Genesee Street and Niagara Street all meet at Niagara Square, the public square you have reached in Buffalo, New York. This is the very heart of Joseph Ellicott’s original radial street pattern, the plan he drew in 1804 for the then village of New Amsterdam. The ground beneath you holds a longer story: the square’s origins trace back to 1763, when the French and Indian War ended French domination of the Niagara Frontier and set the stage for permanent settlement here.
Settlement accelerated after the Revolution, and in 1804 Ellicott — born in 1760 and later living until 1826 — mapped a town on the banks of Lake Erie at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. The land was part of the vast holdings of the Holland Land Company, a Dutch firm that owned much of western New York, and Ellicott served as their local agent. Earlier in his career he even helped his brother Andrew survey Pierre L'Enfant’s plan for the new capital at Washington, an influence you can still read in this layout.
Picture Joseph Ellicott's 1804 plan still traced by these converging streets, drawn for his village on the banks of Lake Erie.