This weekend (Oct 4-5, 2008) I discovered a section of our city about which I had known little. The West Village appears to have been the area in which the first mayor of Buffalo, E. Johnson, made his home and was one of the first residential neighborhoods in the city (after the British burned the village in 1813). Buffalo was incorporated in 1832 and Ebenezer Johnson, mayor, made his home in the "West Village". Most of the homes standing today are all brick and built around the 1860's and later. The earlier homes made of wood had been distroyed by fire and an ordinance demanding that all new homes be of brick constuction was enforced.
It is a very demographically eclectic neighborhood and an interesting Sunday afternoon stroll for those of you who enjoy history and renovated older houses.