Big Time at Little Harlem

Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Joe Louis, Dinah Washington, Count Basie, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughn, Martha Raye, Sugar Ray Robinson, Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis, Jr., Della Reese. The list of celebrities who performed at or visited Ann Montgomery's Little Harlem Hotel from the mid-1930's through the early 1960's was staggering.

The landmark at 496 Michigan Avenue was also a meeting ground for Buffalo's community leaders, judges, lawyers, doctors, politicians, steelworkers, cabbies, news media - people of all races and positions.

It was a place where customers were treated like family, where favorite drinks were memorized by the bar staff who began to mix them immediately upon seeing the club's regulars step inside. Yes, the type of bar where everybody knows your name.


To read more of Jim Bisco's story, see page 38 of the Winter 2006 Heritage Magazine. Subscribe now!


 

The Handsomest Country Club House"

On August 11, 1901, the members of the Buffalo Automobile Club motored into the Pan-American Exposition. Their destination was Alt Nurnberg, a restaurant on the Midway, where club member John M. Satterfield was hosting a dinner for all club members who had made the day's drive from Buffalo to Fort Erie to the Pan-Am...

However, the Buffalo Automobile Club did not survive long.On June 2, 1902, it was reconstituted as the Automobile Club of Buffalo (ACB). Its goal was to "conduct a social and protective organization of all persons who own or are interesed in motor pleasure vehicles." ...

Barely a year after the ACB was founded, Club President W.H. Hotchkiss predicted that "within two years from this time [1904] the organization will have acquired a clubhouse within 15, 20, or 25 miles of this city."

To read the rest of C. Douglas Kohler's story, see page 54 in the Winterl 2006 Heritage Magazine. Subscribe now!

 

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