A Look Back at Westinghouse Buffalo [History]

In 1985, the Westinghouse plant on Genesee Street, next to Buffalo Niagara Airport, in Buffalo, NY, USA, officially closed. The massive 2.5 million-square-foot facility, home of the motors and controls manufacturing business of Westinghouse Electric since 1947, was slated for purchase by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which wanted the building. Instead, it was sold to a local developer, which failed to pay taxes and let it deteriorate. The vacant and battered site was considered a scar on the Buffalo landscape that could never again be occupied because of the lingering threat of lung cancer or mesothelioma due to asbestos processes used in manufacturing materials while the plant was in operation. The community finally caught a break, in 1999, with a US$7.6 million federal grant to demolish the local eyesore. Cranes and bulldozers arrived, the beginning of the large-scale demolition, culminating in October, when the main structure collapsed to the ground in a spectacular implosion. While the walls of the once massive structure are no more, what happened within them over nearly 50 years is a spectacular story of ingenuity.