Niagara Falls: A Symbol of America's Natural and Technological Heritage, Exams of Painting

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Niagara Falls: Sublime, Engineered, or In-Between? Name: Kate Cowie-Haskell Category: Humanities

“The Falls of Niagara may justly be classed among the wonderare the pride of America, unequalled in grandeur, magnitude, and magnificence, bys of the world. They any other known cataract; and have since they were discovered exerted an attractive influence over millions of the human race, who have flocked thither year after year to gaze upon that tumultuous crash of water with feelings of the deepest solemnity. The power and majesty of the Almighty are, perhaps, more awfully exhibited and more fully realized in this stupendous waterfall than in any other scene on earth.” -T. Nelson, 1860 The passage above, taken from the introductory pages of a late-nineteenth century guidebook of Niagara Falls, is representative of the feelings that visitors to Niagara Falls have historically felt upon viewing the natural wonder. Early travelers documented their affective experiences at Niagara in travel journals and postcards, and these stories of the great cataract filtered out of the wilderness and back to civilization in New York, Boston, and London, where they sparked imaginations and imbued Niagara Falls with deep meaning in the mind of the public long before the site was accessible to the masses. Without a rich history or humanized landscape to call its own, America embraced the wilderness as its heritage, and Niagara Falls quickly became the symbol of the new republic: untamed wilderness, unimaginable beauty, and untapped resources. Since its introduction into the Euro-American consciousness, Niagara Falls has become a highly contested landscape, simultaneously embodying the conflicting ideas of preservation and progress and ultimately forming an identity as an American icon dependent on its status as a place in-between the constructed and the natural. To understand the significance of Niagara Falls in the American mind we must understand how the falls were interpreted by the first wave of visitors in the early/mid- 19th century. A few stories of the natural wonder began reaching the public at the beginning of the 18th^ century, and these stories gave Niagara Falls a mystical status in the collective

escape to or from. It is a departure into a kind of therapeutic land management, a release from our crowded and overbuilt environment…” (Shepard, 70). Mills and factories that sprung up around Niagara Falls polluted the area and threatened the integrity of this natural space as a healing haven. Fearing the demise of Niagara Falls, a group of influential artists and policy makers began the “Free Niagara” movement, spearheaded by Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903). He believed that shared natural spaces had the power to “elevate the moral and spiritual condition of the ‘common man’”(Strand 137). To Olmstead, the future of the United States as an increasingly industrialized nation was entangled with the declining landscape at Niagara. With the help of his extensive and powerful social network Olmstead worked towards protecting Niagara Falls from industrialism and making it free for the public. Among Olmstead’s collaborators was Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), who in 1857 produced one of the most acclaimed paintings of Niagara Falls (Figure 1). The painting is notable for its close detail of the falls, but Church only chose this framing to crop all of the surrounding industrial buildings from his masterpiece_._ Church, Olmstead, and a few other powerful men gained support for their cause and eventually submitted a petition to the state governor in 1880, accompanied by a letter that described the plight of the falls: “…In place of the pebbly shore, the graceful ferns and trailing vines of the former days, one now sees a blank stone wall with sewer-like openings through which tail races discharge…overlooking this disfigured river brink stands an unsightly rank of buildings in all stages of preservation and decay…”(Strand 143).

Figure 1: Niagara Falls, From the American Side. Frederic Ewin Church, 1867 The river was personified as a wounded body, which underscores the belief that healing Niagara was symbolic of healing the country. The appeals worked: in 1885 a bill was passed that created the Niagara Reservation, America’s first state park. But the battle fought by the “reservationists” was far from finished. Although the legacy of Niagara Falls as a natural wonder has remained in the forefront of the American consciousness, a less publicized history of technological development has also shaped the falls. While for many Niagara represented the natural world, a way to commune with the earth as it was “before,” others looked at Niagara and saw the future. Among the early visitors were engineers, industrialists, and other enterprising individuals who could not look at Niagara Falls without seeing enormous potential for technological progress. A few mills and hydraulic canals were harnessing a modest amount of horsepower from the falls by the late 1800’s, but significant progress started after Thomas Evershed sold his plan for a water diversion tunnel to the Niagara Falls Power Company (NFPC) in 1886 (McGreevy 110). The NFPC aimed to transmit electricity to Buffalo for mass consumption. Leading experts Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse contributed to the final plan for alternating current

Figure 2: Undetermined. Source: The Latest and Best Views of the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, N.Y.: Robert Allen “New Panoramic View of the Illumination Looking for the Triumphal Bridge”. Photographer: Reid, 1901. Its architect, John Galen Howard, described the building in a way that captured the theme of the Pan-American Exposition: “As regards the architectural design of the Electric Tower, it may be called essentially American…certain ‘influences’ may be pointed out by the critic; but the tower cannot be said to have been designed in any strictly traditional ‘style.’ It shows the trend of thought in this country, and may be taken as an example of modern American architecture”(UB Libraries, The Electric Tower ). The exposition represented the desire of the American people to move forward, past colonial roots and Old World influences, into a new identity marked by innovation and progress. It seems paradoxical that just a few miles outside of this electrical, futuristic wonderland the Niagara Falls State Park lay in stillness and serenity, a testament to the origins of the past. Indeed, the narratives of Niagara Falls as a place of sublime beauty and untouched wonder but also as a place of technological innovation have often been presented as juxtaposition. But the engineered and the natural at Niagara Falls are not diametrically opposed; instead, these narratives have reinforced and reproduced each other over time.

The blending between these two dichotomies really begins long before Euro-Americans were aware of Niagara Falls. Through most of the history of Western civilization, the quality of human life was determined by nature. In the Middle Ages “untouched nature” was dangerous, a threat to existence, and rumored to be the Devil’s terrain. The future was in the hands of the natural world, not controlled by humans. This inability to control nature was coupled with the belief that the ancient times had been the peak of civilization. But the scientific discoveries of the 16th^ and 17th^ centuries as well as the discovery of the New World began to change people’s perceptions of civilization. “Progress” was an idea that became interwoven with the visions of the future, and eventually it was taken for granted that the passage of time would result in greater scientific achievements and a more just and moral world. A key part of the idea of progress was increasing human domination over nature. Writing in the 1600’s, philosopher Francis Bacon articulated his view of the ideal future, a world where “its citizens seek the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of the human empire, to the effecting of all things possible” (McGreevy 104). However, antithetical to this notion of human progress was the experience of the sublime. The sublime is “an abstract quality in which the dominant feature is the presence or idea of transcendental immensity or greatness: power, heroism, or vastness in space or time. It inspires awe and reverence, or possibly fear”(Bell 4). Emmanuel Kant was one of the first philosophers to meditate on the sensation of the sublime, which he called a “negative pleasure, as the mind is both attracted and repelled by the object”(Bell 4). The sublime, which has most commonly been found in nature, is essentially the root of the existential crisis of insignificance people have confronted when viewing a natural spectacle-- and

production of electricity marked a new era of total human control. This is best captured in two images. The first, titled The Spirit of Niagara (Figure 3), was used to market the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. In this painting Niagara Falls is represented as a woman, but instead of being portrayed as a supreme deity, she is docile, and submissive. The second image, painted in 1927, is a mural on the walls of the Schoellkopf Station of the Niagara Falls Power Company (Figure 4). In this mural, titled The Birth of Power , human waves tumble over the falls and generate two poles that generate a spark that gives rise to the Genie of Power: “This allegorical painting tells in vivid and powerful tone, but with eerie lightness, the romantic birth story of humanity’s modern servant—electrical power”(McGreevy 118). Comparing these two paintings it is clear that the natural (represented by the female figure) has been replaced by ideals of science, technology, and civilization (embodied in the powerful male figure). The increasing water diversion at the falls led to a new wave of preservationists who feared that Niagara Falls would run dry if diversion was not regulated. Pressure from these preservationists resulted in the Burton Act of 1906, which was the precursor for the first international treaty between the US and Canada that set a regulation on water diversion. This agreement was in effect until 1950 when the current Niagara River Water Diversion Treaty was adopted. The treaty outlines how much water must be going over the falls at what time (no less than 100,000 cubic feet per second between 8am and 10pm in

Figure 3 : "The Spirit of Niagara," 1901

the summer, and no less than 50,000 cubic feet per second in the winter) ( Niagara River Water Diversion ). These stipulations serve no functional purpose other than to placate the tourists, and in them it is apparent how technological manipulation of Niagara Falls has been a balancing act. The hydroelectric companies have been acutely aware of the way their role in dominating the natural wonder might be perceived by the public. Appeals to the common good and the future of mankind have been used to justify the diminishing of the falls. A popular slogan among the American companies was “Power for the People,” a phrase reminiscent of the slogan used by multiple revolutionary political movements in US history. Hydropower at Niagara Falls was marketed as a natural step in the progression of humanity towards a more just and livable world. But simultaneously hydroelectric companies have sought to validate the Niagara tourist’s desire to experience authentic natural beauty. In a 1901 article written about the granting of the charter for waterpower development on the American side of the falls, William Andrews states, “The recipients of this charter…were men who not only realized the commercial value of such development, but were opposed to the desecration of the most impressive natural object of the world for utilitarian purposes.” He then goes on to detail how preserving the beauty of the falls was a key factor in determining the best way to draw water away from the river, assuring the reader that the alterations are invisible. His article ends: “This masterpiece of Nature remains to-day with its beauty and grandeur unmarred, its

Figure 4 : "The Birth of Power"

it meant twenty years earlier. Engineering Niagara Falls became synonymous with preserving it: rather than nature vs. technology, the story was now nature saved by technology. In truth, this story had been playing out at Niagara Falls since the 1700s. Proprietors of the early commercial ventures at the falls immediately began altering anything within means that would make the tourist experience more comfortable and spectacular. Luna Island and Goat Island, separating the Horseshoe and American Falls, were bolted into the bedrock so that they no longer shook against the force of the thundering water. Terrapin Point was enlarged with landfill so tourists could get a better view of the waterfall (Strand 48). In more recent years sensors have been inserted in cracks to monitor rock slippage. In 1973 the commission in charge of tourist management at Niagara Falls issued surveys to tourists asking how their viewing experiences would best be enhanced: a) by removing the rocky talus from the base of the American Falls, b) by increasing flow over the American Falls, c) by having the water raised in the Maid of the Mist pool, or d) doing nothing. Only 30% of respondents chose the last option (Strand 194). If preserving the natural was ever the

Figure 5 : "Save Niagara From This" Puck Magazine, 1906

goal at Niagara Falls, it has long since been replaced by a desire to preserve the spectacle, or at least some semblance of it. In 1906 a lithograph was published in Puck magazine titled “Save Niagara Falls—From This”(Figure 5). It shows a barren waterfall surrounded by pipes, factories, and tourist stands. The image reflects the fear that without regulation of industry and preservation efforts Niagara Falls would actually dry up. Ironically, the only time the waterfall has been barren in its 12,000 year history was in 1969, when the Niagara River was dammed so that the US Army Corps of Engineers could clear debris and further stabilize the waterfall in the name of preservation (Figure 6). In the words of Ginger Strand, Niagara Falls is “more a monument to man’s meddling than to nature’s strength”(Strand 5).

Figure 6: The American Falls "turned off," 1969 What, then, can we make of Niagara Falls? The place has become an enigma, clinging to a precarious position between a status of either natural or technological wonder, totally decontextualized from the histories of industrialization, deindustrialization, and commercialization that characterize the cities on the shores just beyond the frame of the

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