Oh hi. Is anyone out there? It’s me, Angela, posting on my blog again for the first time in more than a year! Sorry for the lack of updates. Things have been crazy; a lot of life has happened. I have missed you all, and I have missed writing. In my last post about Mr. Edward Butler, I even teased the promise of a new post about the bequests in his will. I apologize for the teasing and then falling off the face of the earth for a year! I will get back into that post as I ease back into my research routine. Thanks for your patience. That post will be coming eventually. For today, I figured for my tiptoe back into the swing of things, we’d start with a small, one-block street. Rand Avenue may be a short street, but this story packs a punch – multiple beautiful houses, banks, landmarked downtown buildings, and more!
Rand Avenue is highlighted in red.
Rand Avenue is a one-block-long street between Delaware Avenue and Edge Park Avenue in the Park Meadow neighborhood of North Buffalo. Rand Ave is unique in Buffalo in that it was named for someone who was still alive at the time. It is named for George Franklin Rand, a banker. After the street was built, Mr. Rand and Seymour H Knox, for whom the adjacent Knox Avenue was named, would drive around the streets, trying to determine whose street was better. I would love to have been in the car with them while they talked up their streets; each would insist that their street was the superior street! Mr. Rand would say that he was amused that the street was named after him. The area was developed by The George B. Ricaby Company as the Park Edge Acres subdivision.
Newspaper Ad From the Ricaby Company for the Park Edge Acres Development, 1923. Source: Buffalo Courier.
George Franklin Rand.
Source: Buffalo News.
George Franklin Rand was born in North Tonawanda in December 1892. He was the son of George Franklin Rand Sr. and Vina Rand. George Sr was a native of Niagara County and took up banking as President of the Columbia National Bank, then the Marine National Bank (which later became the Marine Trust Company). George Jr, the son and our subject today, attended School 16 of Buffalo, Lafayette High School and the University of Pennsylvania. George Jr graduated from the Wharton School of Finance in 1916. (more…)
Discovering Buffalo, One Street at a Time 