TABLE OF CONTENTS
Description of the Project
Niagara Falls as a Source of Power for Manufacturing: A Historical Overview
Survey of Remaining Historical Industrial Sites
Bibliography
by means of shafts sunk in the rock some distance back from the edge of the bank. Wheels were placed in the shaft, and canal water was admitted to turn them. In most cases, a tunnel had to be driven from the bottom of the shaft to the face of the bank for the discharge of the water after passing the wheels. In other cases, wheels were lodged in notches in the face of the cliff. In 1881, the company installed a power plant from which to deliver power to customers at their mills. A shaft 20 feet by 40 feet was sunk in the rock 80 feet deep about 2300 feet back from the river bank. From the bottom of the shaft a tunnel was driven to the face of the bank for a tail race. Power developed from the wheels in use in this plan was transmitted by shaft, belting or rope to customers within 300 feet of the wheel pit.This system was surely the ultimate example of the use of water power to drive the wheels of industry. It was soon to give evolve into much more powerful form of energy production.
“This new industrial section [Highland Avenue area] was necessitated by the overcrowding of the others which, at the time of their establishment, were considered adequate for the city’s needs for many years to come. All of these plants acquired in recent years have been located in either one or the other of these districts. This is an advantage in that it keeps the manufacturing districts intact, facilitates the service of the various corporations by the power companies, and protects residential sections from undesirable encroachments."§The Advent of Electro-process Industries
there were already established there plants producing aluminum, carbide, carborundum, caustic and chlorine, all dependent upon the use of electric power, which was for the first time available in the United States at a very low rate and in large quantities.
The Niagara Falls Power Company had purchased all available lands to the east of the Falls along the river and for some miles back into the country. Users of their power were located on these lands. The site of Oldbury Electro-Chemical Company was three miles east of the Falls along the river, on Buffalo Avenue. There were no sewers, pavements or sidewalks, just a dirt road traveling through farm country.Together with chemical compounds, electrolysis was used at Niagara Falls for the production of certain metals other than aluminum. The Cerium Metals Corporation, for example, turned out so-called rare-earth metals of the cerium group. (Cerium itself is a shiny grey malleable metal used in making carbon arc-lighting and glass.)
The first buildings erected were the first 90 feet of what is known as the ‘Old Furnace Room’, and buildings for finishing and packing the phosphorous and for shops; also a blacksmith shop and a boiler house. A pump in the boiler house supplied the plant with water drawn from the river. . . . The power from The Niagara Falls Power Company was at 2200 volts transformed into 100 volts on the premises. The furnaces consisted of six 50-kw. Single-phase units, and the carbon electrodes and carbon used in the crucibles were made on the premises. Aluminum phosphate from South American islands, calcium phosphate from Tennessee, and sandstone from northern Pennsylvania, together with coke, were the raw materials used in the furnaces.
In 1899 the manufacture of chlorate of potash was added. . . . This chlorate plant was built to the east of the phosphorus plant, with a transformer room, cell room, first and second crystallizing rooms, grinding and packing room, and a warehouse. With the exception of the grinding room, which was of brick, all of the buildings were of wooden construction with galvanized iron sheet protection on the outside. . . . [In 1902] fire occurred in the wooden cell room, which had been thoroughly contaminated with cell spray from the open cells for the previous three years. The transformer room and cell room and most of their contents were lost, but these buildings were rebuilt of fireproof construction and operation recommenced late in 1903.