War Memorial Stadium (later Johnny B. Wiley Pavilion)
Side was originally home to several of the city’s white ethnic immigrant communities from its founding to the mid-twentieth century. This col- lage illustrates the demographic transformations that have occurred on this site from the 1930s to the present.
In 1937, the federal Works Progress Association completed a project originally referred to as “Best Street Stadium,” but later known by a series of different names (e.g., Roesch Memorial Stadium, Grover Cleveland Stadium, Civic Stadium, and War Memorial Stadium). Built on the former site of Prospect Reservoir, the 40,000-seat stadium later served as the home of the Buffalo Bills football team from 1960 to 1972, and the Buffalo Bison’s baseball team in the 1960s and again from 1979-1987, before its decommissioning in 1988. Today it is known as the Johnny B. Wiley Amateur Athletics Sports Pavilion. Named after a community activist and run by his surviving family, it has been retrofitted to house a series of outdoor sports programs for local high schools.
