Fifty years ago, Alaska and Hawaii became the 49th and 50th states, Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba and Walt Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” and “Ben-Hur” with Charlton Heston were on movie screens.

1959 also saw four Buffalo institutions come into being—the Buffalo Bills, WNED-TV, O’Connell’s and Hyatt’s.

The Bills’ half-century anniversary has received widespread attention, including a museum exhibition at the Buffalo&Erie County Historical Society. But the contributions to the fabric of Buffalo and Western New York by the other three also have been significant.

O’Connell’s

O’Connell’s, at 3240 Main St., near the University at Buffalo’s South Campus, has been a popular retailer of classic men’s, boys and women’s clothes.

Bernie Huber went to work there part time in its first year while a political science major at UB. The store was initially called O’Connell, Lucas and Chelf—named for Bills players Thomas O’Connell, Richie Lucas and Don Chelf, who were co-owners.

Huber, now 65, bought the store in 1961 and runs it today with two of his four children, John and Ethan. The store, once one of more than a dozen locally run men’s clothing stores in Buffalo, is now the last one standing in the city limits.

Two longer-running, locally identified men’s stores are in the suburbs, the Riverside Men’s Shop in Amherst and the New York Store in Lancaster.

“They became a vanishing species after the 1960s and ’70s. They dropped like flies in the ’80s. It was like, ‘There’s another one,’”Huber said.

He thinks he knows why.

“They changed their concept from being a good, quality men’s clothing store to following the trends. They didn’t stick to what they did best,” Huber said.

His store added women’s apparel in 1981. Joan Fedyszyn, the women’s buyer and a former costume designer in New York, said what she carries on the store’s second floor is “the difference between fashion and style. Fashion comes and goes, and style endures. It’s good to have both —your basics of classic fashion, and then to funk it up a little bit with a little bit of fashion.

“A lot of the lines we carry can take you anywhere in the world, and you’re still looking good,” Fedyszyn said.

Loyal customers come from across Western New York, and from as far as Rochester and Toronto. The tailored clothing is made in the United States or Canada, or imported from countries known for making that item. The company doesn’t import from Asia.

“We do a tremendous business with the college students, with politicians, with older people. We do the bar mitzvahs, the first communions, the snowball dance,” Huber said.

“The clothes are as appropriate today as they were 10 years ago and will be 10 years from now,” John Huber said.

The merchandise at the store comes at a price. Shoes run from the high $300s to $650. Trousers range from $80 to $285. Ties start at $35 and go to $145. Suits can cost from $325 to $1,200 for finer wool suits.

A pair of cashmere socks sell for $89.95.

Even in these tough times, Bernie Huber said business, including Internet sales, has been booming.

“We have just finished the best year in the history of our store,” Huber said.

Hyatt’s

Hyatt’s, which has an anchor store at 910 Main St., and another at 8565 Main St. in Clarence, has been the go-to place for art supplies for everyone from occasional artists and art students to architects and engineers.

Hyatt’s also began when there were a slew of downtown competitors, outlasting all of them.

The company was started by Charles Hyatt, who opened a small storefront on Franklin Street in Allentown. The company moved to its current Buffalo location in 1961, using just one of the four storefronts now occupied. He bought the entire building in 1978, several years after opening the Clarence store. There is also a store and warehouse in Rochester.

Greg Hyatt, who with his brother Peter bought the business from their father in 1988, compares Hyatt’s to a “small-town hardware store.”

“There is an old style of retailing here, which comes about because we’ve been here a long time, our staff is very experienced and senior in terms of number of years worked, and many, many customers are on a first-name basis,” Hyatt said.

“We know what type of work they’re doing, what type of materials they are using and how they’re progressing.”

The store has 35,000 items, from paints, stretched canvases and parchment paper to portfolios, fountain pens and unusual gift items such as flip books and dolls of famous artists. There is also a large selection of art supplies for children.

Most of the company’s business now comes from outside Western New York.

Hyatt’s has a sign division to distribute digital sign-making equipment and materials, and an engineering supply division to serve architects, engineers and industrial accounts. It owns a warehouse in New England to stock a large inventory and make next-day delivery easier to customers in 13 states, and is a dealer for Pantone color reference products. It also has a strong Internet business.

At the same time, Hyatt said, its retail business is going well, and he looks forward to continued progress on Main Street as the medical campus expands and improvements to the block are made.

WNED

WNED-TV has been providing public television for half a century.

“We were the first [PBS station] on in the State of New York. In the very early years there were maybe about 10 in the country,” said Donald K. Boswell, the station’s president and chief executive officer.

The station had a much weaker signal when it first went on-air. WNED started broadcasting in the Lafayette Hotel, moved into offices on Barton Street and then to its downtown location near the Adams Mark Hotel 15 years ago.

The station is No. 1 nationally in viewing on a per capita basis, and No. 1 in prime time, yet proportionately has very low membership, Boswell said.

Unlike most markets, which have 7 to 10 percent membership base, WNED struggles with 4 percent.

So, the push is on, he said, to expand from about 42,000 members to 50,000, especially with corporate underwriting tightening.

The station suffered a blow in August when PBS dropped the WNED-produced “Reading Rainbow” series due to lack of funding.

But Boswell, entering his 12th year at the station, said the station receives a lot of recognition with other national productions it produces, and looks to continue the pace.

Recent productions have included “Elbert Hubbard: An American Original,” “Frank Lloyd Wright’s Buffalo” and “Niagara Falls.”