A group in town, the Pan-American Collector's Society, numbering about 70 people, has filled a gallery at the State University at Buffalo with a display of tickets, trinkets, souvenir glassware and other exposition keepsakes passed down from generation to generation, and now actively traded on Internet auction sites. The county bar association plans to re-enact the trial of McKinley's assassin.

One of the city's ubiquitous abandoned grain elevators, the legacy of its once dominant role in shipping goods from the Midwest, will be illuminated two nights a week through September with images from the expo. There has been a parade and dozens of seminars and readings, using the centennial as a theme for looking back and forward.

Whether because of McKinley or, perhaps more rationally, the late 20th-century collapse of the manufacturing industry that had been the city's backbone, hard luck has come in many forms.

With a 2000 population of 292,648, Buffalo now ranks No. 59 in population, behind places like Mesa City, Ariz., Arlington, Tex., and Fresno, Calif. There were snowstorms, including the infamous 1977 blizzard of 20-foot snowdrifts, that inspired a run of weather jokes by Johnny Carson, and, from 1991 to 1994, the beloved Buffalo Bills lost four straight Super Bowls.

''There are people who seriously believe if McKinley was not shot here, the Bills would have gone on to win four Super Bowls,'' said William Siener, the executive director of the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society.

Today, sometimes just the name of the city draws a smirk. How it got its name is much disputed, with some historians speculating that buffaloes may indeed have roamed here centuries ago or maybe the name came from a creek whose Indian name, beaver, was mistranslated, or maybe it was in honor of a solitary Indian who lived on that creek.

Whatever the case, Buffalo was not mocked 100 years ago. The exposition's ''Spanish renaissance revival'' buildings, festooned with 8-watt bulbs in what was then one of the most spectacular displays of decorative light ever seen, were torn down afterward, as planned; the site of the expo, formerly a farm, is now a neighborhood of broad streets and pleasant homes and includes the New York State Building, the only permanent structure and now home for the historical society.