Dec. 21, 1979 Gusto cover story: South Park Botanical Gardens
How bad were things for Buffalo’s cultural treasures in the 1970s? Pretty dismal. As a newly-minted gardening enthusiast – I had transformed the front yard outside my old apartment building four years earlier – I had a special interest in this one. Dec. 21, 1979 An Oasis Like the heroic dome of Our Lady of Victory Basilica down the street, the Botanical Gardens in South Park at first seem like a mirage. What else is one to make of such an unexpected piece of grandeur? Here’s a veritable Victorian crystal palace of a conservatory rising right out of the otherwise unpretentious landscape of cozy old South Buffalo. All that’s needed is a majestic stone arch at the park entrance and the illusion would be complete. Actually, there is an arch, though not of stone. It’s inside the conservatory, at the entrance to the main domed room. The eyes travel up and up the trunks of a p...