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East Lovejoy, Buffalo — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Freight tracks ring East Lovejoy on every side, the far eastern district of Buffalo known as Iron Island, German and Italian by origin.
About East Lovejoy
Where to stay in East Lovejoy
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East Lovejoy keeps no hotel of its own, so the working bases are downtown Buffalo to the west and Cheektowaga, over the city line to the east. Neither is far. The quarter itself is frame houses and corner churches wedged between Broadway and William Street, and the freight lines that gave it the Iron Island name still cut the grid into awkward pieces.
You would come out for the Iron Island Museum at 998 Lovejoy Street, for a service at Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church, or for an hour at Hennepin Park, then drive back to the room.
About East Lovejoy
What are the main landmarks in East Lovejoy?
East Lovejoy's landmarks are two small museums and an Orthodox parish. The Iron Island Museum fills a former Methodist Episcopal church at 998 Lovejoy Street, which spent decades as a funeral home before the Iron Island Preservation Society of Lovejoy took it on. Sts.
Peter and Paul Orthodox Church stands at 40 Benzinger Street, the oldest Orthodox congregation in Buffalo, its yellow brick Byzantine Revival church listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2015. Joseph E. Fronczak drew it in 1932. The Buffalo Fire Historical Museum keeps its apparatus at William and North Ogden Streets.
What is the history of East Lovejoy?
East Lovejoy began as the Churchyard farm, not as a street plan. Joseph and Sarah Churchyard farmed the ground between Broadway and William Street until 25 August 1877, when they filed a deed at County Hall dividing the property into building lots. Rail yards and car shops closed in around the new streets, and Germans, Irish, Russians, and Italians from the province of Campobasso settled within walking distance of the work.
The Churchyard deed predates the name. When Buffalo Central Terminal opened in 1929 the old Lovejoy Street was cut in two, and the eastern half, from Central Avenue to the Cheektowaga line, became East Lovejoy Street.
Where is East Lovejoy?
East Lovejoy runs from Central Avenue east toward Goethe Street, held between Broadway and William Street, with Cheektowaga beyond the city line.
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Updated September 2026