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Kensington, Buffalo — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Shops line the crossing of Kensington Avenue and Bailey Avenue, the two commercial streets of Kensington, a neighbourhood in northeastern Buffalo.
About Kensington
Where to stay in Kensington
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Kensington has no hotel between Main Street and Eggert Road. The Kensington Expressway cuts it in two. That road carries NY 33 east through Cheektowaga to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, so an airport bed is a straight run in along one road.
LaSalle Station sits a little over a mile northwest of the Kensington Avenue and Bailey Avenue crossing, and the Metro Rail runs from there down Main Street into downtown Buffalo.
About Kensington
What are the main landmarks in Kensington?
Kensington keeps its landmark at 319 Suffolk Street, an Art Deco school block. Built in 1934, it opened as Kensington High School on September 9, 1937, closed in 2003, and took the Frederick Law Olmsted School in 2012. St. Gerard's Roman Catholic Church stands at the southern corner of Bailey Avenue and East Delavan Avenue.
Indiana limestone clads it. The basilica copies Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome at a third the size, and a 110-foot bell tower was added in 1930. The last full mass there was said on January 1, 2008.
What is the history of Kensington?
Farms and timber lots covered Kensington through the 19th century. Completion of the Kensington Avenue street car line in 1895 pulled German families onto the new blocks, and after World War I the private building went hard. Louis Kinsey worked out of Chicago.
He developed the ground here in 1919-1920, Italian and Polish households arrived through the 1920s, and St. Lawrence's Roman Catholic Church formed in 1930. The Kensington Expressway was driven through the middle in the 1950s, leaving a northern half and a southern half.
Where is Kensington?
Kensington fills the ground between Main Street on the west and Eggert Road on the east, with Winspear Avenue along the north and East Delavan Avenue along the south.
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Updated September 2026