As late as the 1940s, newspaper stories written about Buffalo’s Italian population were painted with wild strokes of exotic color. “Off in a section of the city where the rays of the sun, on a bright day, glisten down upon dilapidated housetops and seek their way into narrow streets and by-ways with which the place abounds, are colonized a people in whose native land the skies are the fairest and bluest, and where the very breezes are filled with invigorating fragrance.” – The opening paragraph of “The Italian Colony in Buffalo,” The Buffalo Courier, 1898

Sprinkled throughout 50 years' worth of these newspaper accountings of how and why Italians came to and flourished in Buffalo, are the facts – and the colorful descriptions – which make up this story. A handful of Genoese were the first Italians to make Buffalo their home.