Buffalo 1930 Census Enumeration District Boundaries

These enumeration district boundaries were drawn using the census descriptions as a reference. There are almost certainly inaccuracies on this map, so please use it more as a guide and less as a reference. There are many reasons for this:

• Quite a few street names have changed over the years. For example, Potter St. is now Nash St., and parts of Elk and Abbott were renamed South Park Ave. (confusingly, part of the original South Park Ave. was renamed Southside Parkway).
• Some streets have disappeared since this census was taken. A good example is Union St. between William and East Eagle, just south of Milnor St.
• Some streets have been moved. Virginia Street between Ellicott and Michigan follows a different path than it did at the time of this census. Also, apparently Edward and Goodell used to join together at Main Street, whereas now Edward is now slightly to the south of the original intersection (or is Goodell now slightly to the north? Or some of both?).
• Some census district descriptions used physical boundaries that either no longer exist or have changed. For example, the paths of some creeks have changed over the years.
• Some features didn't even exist at the time of the census. For example, in ED 21 of the 1930 census there's a reference to the "proposed Buffalo River Channel." Lacking a map that shows these kinds of things, I had to make the best guesses I could.
• Some features are vague, such as "Lake Erie." Where in Lake Erie is it referring to? Things like this can affect the overall path of a boundary line. Again, guesswork unfortunately came into play with some of these as well.
• There are different district descriptions that used the term "Railroad Tracks" as a boundary. There are many railroad tracks in Buffalo and it's not always obvious which ones are meant. Once again, guesswork had to suffice.

So, if you think I'm the kind of person who can't color within the lines or draw a straight line, you're probably correct but that may not be the reason why my street boundaries don't always match up with the streets as they appear today.

A very good reference for finding the ED for a particular street is Steve Morse's Unified Census ED Finder.

The census images on Ancestry.com are helpful in figuring out where particular buildings and other references are located. They also have maps for the 1940 census, which are helpful for prior years as well.

This mapping tool was incredibly helpful in finding the GPS coordinates for the various street intersections and other landmarks.

The code for this map was generated using a Perl script I wrote which reads two data files: One contains a list of reference points with GPS coordinates, and the other connects the dots to form the ED boundaries. My knowledge of the Google Maps API is still evolving; I don't know why marker labels don't reliably appear, and a search box would be very helpful. Hopefully fixes will be coming soon for both of those issues.

I hope you find this useful. If you do, please feel free to send me an email message.