War Memorial Stadium (later Johnny B. Wiley Pavilion)

Now the city’s premier African American neighborhood, Buffalo’s East
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.

War Memorial Stadium