industry · Erie County
Buffalo Color
Buffalo
Former dye and chemical-manufacturing complex beside the Buffalo River. Investigations documented metals, volatile and semi-volatile compounds in plant sewer sediment, including storm sewers leading to river Outfalls 006 and 011; remedies included measures to address contaminated sewer sediment and limit migration toward the river.
The documented story
What happened here?
NYSDEC's Area D history identifies phosgene production during 1917-1918. Military records separately document National Aniline's 1918 mustard-gas plant project. These accounts establish wartime chemical-warfare involvement, but actual mustard output and the detailed relationship between the two operations remain unresolved.
The revised 1989 investigation also identifies Building 432, built in 1917, with later picric-acid production. Its possible phosgene use is less certain than DEC's separate Area D production history.
Chemical and dye manufacturing began on this Buffalo River property in 1879 under the Schoellkopf Aniline and Dye Company. Later owners included National Aniline, Allied Chemical, and Buffalo Color. EPA reports that the complex produced more than 1,000 dyes and organic chemicals based on aniline and related compounds.
The site's long operating history created multiple cleanup areas rather than one simple event. Plant sections, sewers, soil, groundwater, shoreline, and the adjacent river have been investigated through different state and federal programs.
The color of everyday products came from difficult industrial work
Buffalo Color connected blue jeans, chemical labor, and the Buffalo River
3,000approximately, workers at the plant's reported peak
1879-1977
A riverfront dye works grew into a major chemical complex
The Schoellkopf works became National Aniline and then part of Allied Chemical. Thousands of employees produced aniline dyes, intermediates, acids, and other chemicals while process wastewater and waste handling connected the factory to the Buffalo River and adjoining plant areas.
1917-1918
World War I chemical-warfare work
DEC's Area D history identifies phosgene production during 1917-1918. Military records separately describe a July 6, 1918 contract for a mustard-gas plant designed for 50 tons daily, reported 80 percent complete on November 1. A 1926 court opinion says a mustard plant operated but gives no production dates or quantities. The contract and construction are documented; planned capacity is not verified output.
1917 and later
Building 432 carried more than one chemical history
The revised 1989 investigation dates Building 432 to 1917. It treats a phosgene role with Edgewood Arsenal as possible, but identifies later picric-acid manufacture after the 1920s. Exact dates and customers remain unknown. Most recorded later structures served detergent production during the 1930s and 1940s.
1916-1976 waste handling
Some wastes left for recycling; burning residues stayed beneath the soil
Metal sludges were piled at the peninsula tip to drain, then shipped by truck or rail to metal recyclers; iron-sludge lagoons occupied reclaimed ground. Combustible wastes burned along the riverbank from 1922. Open pits operated until 1954, followed by an incinerator in Building 448 through 1972. Investigators reported that ash and chemical residues were left in pits and covered with dirt. These are documented plant-wide practices, without a verified link to individual wartime gas batches.
1977-2003
Synthetic indigo tied Buffalo labor to the global blue-jeans market
Buffalo Color bought the operation from Allied and concentrated on indigo dye. State historical material says the plant employed about 3,000 people at its peak; lower-priced overseas production eventually undercut the business, and the final approximately 170 production workers were laid off in 2003.
After production
The factory closed, but the property did not become one simple cleanup site
EPA and DEC records divide the complex into areas with different contaminants, owners, remedies, and reuse conditions. Buildings, sewers, soil, groundwater, shoreline pathways, and river sediment therefore belong to connected but not interchangeable records.
News record
Major news events
Coverage selected here marks a turning point in public awareness, policy, enforcement, employment, or cleanup. Links open at the original publisher or archive; WNYAtlas does not reproduce restricted articles or images.
More than a century of dye and organic-chemical production ends on the Buffalo River
The plant's closure left separate cleanup areas, contaminated sewers, groundwater, and a workforce history that cannot be reduced to the later redevelopment parcels.
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ↗Athletic reuse exposes the practical importance of neighboring air emissions
Fields on remediated Area E depended on engineered soil controls, while complaints and regulatory action involving nearby PVS emissions raised a separate air-pathway question for athletes and spectators.
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ↗Chronology
Timeline
- 1879
Schoellkopf Aniline and Dye Company established the dye and chemical works beside the Buffalo River.
- 1916–1920
The property became part of National Aniline and then Allied Chemical.
- 1917-1918
DEC identifies phosgene manufacturing in Area D; this is an attributed historical account, not a measurement of present-day contamination.
- July-November 1918
The government contracted for a mustard-gas plant designed for 50 tons daily. The War Department reports it was 80 percent complete on November 1; capacity is not verified output.
- After the 1920s
The investigation documents picric-acid production in Building 432; the exact operating dates remain unresolved.
- 1922-1972
Area D handled combustible plant wastes; open pits gave way to the Building 448 incinerator in 1954.
- 1977
Buffalo Color purchased the plant and focused later production on indigo dye and related materials.
- 2003
Manufacturing ended after Buffalo Color ceased operations and entered bankruptcy.
- 2000s–present
State brownfield and inactive-hazardous-waste programs, together with federal corrective-action oversight, addressed the complex in separate areas and phases.
Environmental record
Documented impacts
- Area D's broader chemical works used iron-sludge lagoons and metal-sludge weathering areas. The 1989 investigation's 1922 chronology describes tars burned on the peninsula and liquids sewered to the Buffalo River. No reviewed record traces a specific WWI gas-production waste stream to those destinations.
- The revised investigation describes ash and chemical residues left in burning pits and covered with soil. This establishes a historical on-site disposal pathway without identifying a specific WWI-agent waste stream.
- Historic wastes included off-specification dye, process tars and residues, spent catalysts, and waste solvents.
- Investigations documented metals, volatile compounds, and semi-volatile compounds in parts of the plant system, including sewer sediment.
- Plant sewers leading toward Buffalo River outfalls became part of the investigation and remedy.
Response
Cleanup and controls
- The large complex was divided into Areas A through E because conditions, ownership, and cleanup programs varied across the property.
- New York reports that Area C was remediated through the Brownfield Cleanup Program and that Area D is capped and secured; work in Areas A, B, and E has proceeded through separate state programs and site-management requirements.
- EPA's RCRA corrective-action record separately describes proposed measures for remaining portions of the former facility, including contaminated-material removal, sewer work, groundwater controls, and long-term monitoring. That federal record should not be read as a single status statement for every parcel.
- Shoreline habitat restoration at the Buffalo Color peninsula complemented—but did not replace—the industrial-site cleanup programs.
Then and now
The site today
Former plant areas have moved through cleanup and redevelopment at different rates. The correct present-day account therefore depends on the specific parcel and cleanup program rather than treating the entire former complex as one uniform condition.
Atlas connections
Connected places
These collections explain documented material, facility, waterway, ownership, or cleanup relationships. Inclusion does not imply that every place shares one contaminant source or plume.
The Burning Years: incineration and residue histories
These places illustrate separate municipal and industrial burning, residue disposal and later reuse histories; the group does not establish a common furnace, hauler or waste stream.
Ash-related lead and arsenic on the plant grounds and creek corridor required a property-specific remedy.
Village burning and landfillDepew Village LandfillMunicipal incineration and disposal beside Cayuga Creek have their own cleanup record.
Industrial burningBuffalo ColorThe investigation documents buried on-site burning residues.
Commercial treatment and incinerationFrontier Chemical — PendletonIncineration was one of several waste-treatment processes.
Separate successor facilityFrontier Chemical — Royal AvenueHistorical records document sewer and off-site residue pathways.
Fill transfer and later reuseTifft Nature PreserveUSGS describes Squaw Island fill moved into an engineered disposal area; not all fill was identified as ash.
Wartime chemical production and its environmental record
WWI agent production, a mustard-gas plant project, WWII protective treatment and later disposal histories have different evidence. These connections do not establish continuous warfare-agent manufacture, a shared plume, or a verified destination for WWI gas-production wastes.
DEC identifies Area D phosgene manufacture; military records document a mustard-gas project with unresolved actual output.
Oldbury predecessor productionHooker Main Plant / Occidental Niagara PlantOldbury manufactured phosgene in 1918, decades before its acquisition by Hooker.
WWII and Korean War protective treatmentSolvent Chemical SiteDuPont and later Hooker manufactured impregnite at 3163 Buffalo Avenue. The treatment was protective, not proof of poison-gas production.
Later Oldbury disposal connectionHooker / 102nd Street LandfillOldbury acquired landfill parcels in 1924. Later phosphorus-waste burial does not establish a destination for its 1918 gas-production wastes.
Buffalo Color facility and river system
Plant parcels, sewer pathways, shoreline areas, and Buffalo River sediment records overlap geographically but are governed through different cleanup programs.
The main record covers the former dye and organic-chemical plant and its parcel-specific cleanup history.
Plant-area recordBuffalo Color Area E / Former Medaille FieldArea E is tracked separately so conditions on one portion of the former complex are not generalized to every parcel.
Receiving water and sediment remedyBuffalo RiverThe river record provides the larger sediment-remediation and habitat-restoration context for shoreline industries.
Buffalo River industrial corridor
Industrial parcels, former disposal areas, sediment remedies, and restored habitats form a shared river corridor while retaining separate ownership and cleanup records.
The river is the organizing environmental system for this collection.
Chemical-manufacturing shorelineBuffalo ColorBuffalo Color represents a major industrial parcel with documented sewer and shoreline pathways.
Steel and coke landscapeRepublic SteelThe former Republic Steel landscape links heavy industry, managed brownfields, and riverfront redevelopment.
Former industrial propertyIroquois Gas / Westwood PharmaceuticalThis property adds a distinct industrial and cleanup history within the broader river corridor.
Peninsula cleanup areaKatherine Street PeninsulaThe peninsula record connects upland contamination, shoreline conditions, and river restoration.
Landfill and steel propertyAlltift Landfill / Ramco SteelAlltift links filled industrial land to the river corridor's disposal history.
Recovered landscapeTifft Nature PreserveTifft shows the corridor's transition from industrial and filled land to habitat and public use.
Confined-disposal and habitat siteTimes Beach Confined Disposal SiteTimes Beach connects dredged-material management with later habitat value.