The Erie Canal made Buffalo one of America’s most vital cities. Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Henry Hobson Richardson designed important buildings; Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux added a string of parks. Now, long after the canal’s demise, the city is playing to its strengths. Richardson’s impressive 1880 psychiatric hospital has been reborn as Hotel Henry, courtesy of Deborah Berke Partners. (Another portion of the vast complex will soon open as an architecture center.) And it’s the perfect time to visit Wright’s Darwin Martin and George Barton Houses, neighboring Prairie-style residences that have both completed restorations in the past year. Tours begin in the Toshiko Mori–designed visitor center, a gossamer counterpoint to Wright’s heavy masonry. “Architects are naturally drawn to Buffalo for its heritage—but something greater is happening to the city,” says OMA New York’s Shohei Shigematsu, who is overseeing an ongoing expansion to another local treasure, the encyclopedic Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Tom Loonan

As he’s discovered, the city is exploding with new restaurants and cafés, from Remedy House and Las Puertas in the burgeoning Five Points neighborhood to Craving in suddenly hip North Buffalo. Elsewhere, industrial silos have been transformed into a performance venue, a former church into an exhibition space. And galleries like Anna Kaplan Contemporary are fueling the art scene. Reflects Shigematsu: “The care paid to history and the influx of young talents have spurred a renaissance.”