ABSTRACT
History exists as a continuous construction of memories (images). Conversely, this constructed history fabricates our cultural memory and identity. The high frequency of res in American cities, the iconography of the American reghter, and the power of images of destruction have combined to construct an understanding of re that is uniquely American. Indeed, urban landscapes of any particular future have always been, in part, determined by re, but nowhere moreso than the American city. Fire is somehow accepted as an inevitable occurrence (albeit for someone else). Buffalo, New York, as an old Eastern industrial city has a past, present and future that is inexorably linked with re.
