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South Buffalo, Buffalo — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Brick storefronts line Seneca Street in South Buffalo, an Irish-rooted third of the city where two Olmsted parks meet the old steel waterfront.
About South Buffalo
Where to stay in South Buffalo
Each area has its own feel; here's who each one suits.
South Buffalo keeps no hotel of its own on Seneca Street or Abbott Road. Chain rooms cluster beside the New York State Thruway in West Seneca, while downtown Buffalo holds the boutique and business hotels a short ride north along South Park Avenue. Metro Bus 16 covers that run.
A roadside option sits on Route 5 in Lackawanna, close to the Outer Harbor and the walk out to Gallagher Beach. Come for Cazenovia Park and you will want a car.
About South Buffalo
What are the main landmarks in South Buffalo?
South Buffalo's landmarks are the two parks Frederick Law Olmsted drew for the city's south side and the parkways that stitch them together. Cazenovia Park, split by Cazenovia Creek, keeps a 1912 casino building and a 1902 shelter house beside a nine-hole golf course, ball diamonds and tennis courts. South Park holds the other nine holes.
The domed glass conservatory of the Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens stands at 2655 South Park Avenue, raised by Lord & Burnham at the close of the nineteenth century. Red Jacket Parkway and McKinley Parkway link the two, meeting at McClellan Circle.
What is the history of South Buffalo?
South Buffalo was Seneca land before it was Irish. The Treaty of Big Tree left the Buffalo Creek Reservation to the Seneca in 1797, and a second treaty ratified in 1842 dissolved it and sent the nation south to Cattaraugus. German farmers worked the opened lots first.
From about 1875 the speculator William Fitzpatrick cut side streets off Seneca Street and Abbott Road and filled them with houses for Irish families out of the First Ward. Bethlehem Steel and Republic Steel then hired the neighborhood. The mills closed in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Where is South Buffalo?
The Buffalo River cuts South Buffalo off from the rest of the city, with Lake Erie west, West Seneca east and Lackawanna south. Cazenovia Creek runs in from the east.
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Updated September 2026