[25][13] Early landowners were Iroquois interpreter Captain William Johnston, former enslaved man Joseph "Black Joe" Hodges and Cornelius Winney, a Dutch trader who arrived in 1789.

[b][32] British military engineer John Montresor referred to "Buffalo Creek" in his 1764 journal, the earliest recorded appearance of the name.

[54] Attorney John Milburn and local industrialists convinced the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company to relocate from Scranton, Pennsylvania to the town of West Seneca in 1904.

[47] From the late 19th century to the 1920s, mergers and acquisitions led to distant ownership of local companies; this had a negative effect on the city's economy.

[64] According to Fox Weather, Buffalo is one of the top five snowiest large cities in the country, receiving, on average, 95 inches of snow annually.

[76] In the city's Parkside neighborhood, the Darwin D. Martin House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in his Prairie School style.

[83] The 2002 redevelopment of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse led to the creation of Larkinville, home to several mixed-use projects and anchored by corporate offices.

From the 1830s to the 1850s, they were joined by Irish and German immigrants from Europe, both peasants and working class, who settled in enclaves on the city's south and east sides.

[79] During the 1830s, Buffalo residents were generally intolerant of the small groups of Black Americans who began settling on the city's East Side.

[108][109] However, the effects of redlining, steering,[110] social inequality, blockbusting, white flight[110] and other racial policies resulted in the city (and region) becoming one of the most segregated in the U.S.[109][111][112] During the 1940s and 1950s, Puerto Rican migrants arrived en masse, also seeking industrial jobs, settling on the East Side and moving westward.

[needs update][121] A Jewish community began developing in the city with immigrants from the mid-1800s; about one thousand German and Lithuanian Jews settled in Buffalo before 1880.

[127] The Erie Canal was the impetus for Buffalo's economic growth as a transshipment hub for grain and other agricultural products headed east from the Midwest.

Its primary sectors include health care, business services (banking, accounting, and insurance), retail, tourism and logistics, especially with Canada.

[135] Buffalo is home to the headquarters of Rich Products, Delaware North and New Era Cap Company; the aerospace manufacturer Moog Inc. and toy maker Fisher-Price are based in nearby East Aurora.

[170] James formed his Stone City Band in Buffalo, and had national appeal with several crossover singles in the R&B, disco and funk genres in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Singer-songwriter and activist Ani DiFranco has released over 20 folk and indie rock albums on Righteous Babe Records, her Buffalo-based label.

[174] Underground hip-hop acts in the city partner with Buffalo-based Griselda Records, whose artists include Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine, and Benny the Butcher, who all occasionally refer to Buffalo culture in their lyrics.

[185] With an influx of refugees and other immigrants to Buffalo, its number of ethnic restaurants (including the West Side Bazaar kitchen incubator) has increased.

[196] It includes the Explore & More Children's Museum, the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, LECOM Harborcenter, and a number of shops and restaurants.

Several colleges and universities in the area field intercollegiate sports teams; the Buffalo Bulls and the Canisius Golden Griffins compete in NCAA Division I.

Buffalo collaborated with its sister city Kanazawa to create the park's Japanese Garden in 1970, where cherry blossoms bloom in the spring.

[213][needs update] Efforts to convert Buffalo's former industrial waterfront into recreational space have attracted national attention, with some writers comparing its appeal to that of Niagara Falls.

[224] With its nine districts, the Buffalo Common Council enacts laws, levies taxes, and approves mayoral appointees and the city budget.

[233] Although some criminal activity in the city remains higher than the national average, total crimes have decreased since the 1990s; one reason may be the gun buyback program implemented by the Brown administration in the mid-2000s.

[235] A 2021 Partnership for the Public Good report noted that the BPD, which had a 2020–21 budget of about $145.7 million, had an above-average police-to-citizen ratio of 28.9 officers per 10,000 residents in 2020 – higher than peer cities Minneapolis and Toledo, Ohio.

[242] With vacant and abandoned homes prone to arson, squatting, prostitution and other criminal activities, the fire and police department's resources were overburdened before the 2010s.

[256] Movies shooting significant footage in Buffalo include Hide in Plain Sight (1980),[257] Tuck Everlasting (1981),[257] Best Friends (1982),[257] The Natural (1984),[257] Vamping (1984),[257] Canadian Bacon (1995),[257] Buffalo '66 (1998),[257] Manna from Heaven (2002),[257] Bruce Almighty (2003),[258] The Savages (2007),[257] Slime City Massacre (2010), Henry's Crime (2011),[257] Sharknado 2: The Second One (2014),[258] Killer Rack (2015), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows (2016),[259] Marshall (2016),[258] The American Side (2017),[260] The First Purge (2018),[261] The True Adventures of Wolfboy (2019)[262] and A Quiet Place Part II (2021).

SUNY Erie, the county's two-year public higher-education institution, and the for-profit Bryant & Stratton College have small downtown campuses.

[300] The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) operates the region's public transit, including its airport, light-rail system, buses, and harbors.

A snow emergency is declared by the National Weather Service after a snowstorm, and the city's roads, major sidewalks and bridges are cleared by over seventy snowplows within 24 hours.