Return to Reflections index page

From the Gowanda PennySaver News "Reflections" series compiled by Mary Pankow. issue date - April 25, 2004

c. 1970s 2004

Demolition Derby - In photo on right, an excavator sits atop a pile of rubble that most recently was the Gowanda Eye Care Center at 60 South Water Street. Built about 1960 by Eugene Babinger, the building had a variety of uses, beginning with Babinger’s lawn and garden equipment store. In the 1960s and 1970s, it housed two successive Yamaha dealerships known as Ron’s Sports and Service, and Lee-Roy’s Sales and Service. Later on, Forrest Dailey’s Fashion Floors occupied it. Dr. Eugene McDonough located the eye care center there in the late 1980s. Part of the structure was declared unsafe due to failure of a retaining wall. The village acquired and demolished it as part of the creekside revitalization project.    (Photo on left courtesy of Phil Palen, Gowanda Village Historian.)