•   technological progress vs. social progress
• most advanced, most civilized
• "arc of history bends towards justice"
• technology today has created a culture of comparison
• choice
• you can't separate technology from people
  

"cultural meaning of Niagara Falls"


Leonard Henkle proposed an international hotel bridging the river

King Gillette proposed a city called Metropolis

• forget capitalism, which is full of wasteful competition, and plan everything out rationally
• then people can focus on research and invention and progress can speed up
  
• cooperation should be the basis of society, selfishness would be eliminated
  
• everyone would live in one gigantic city and eat in common dining halls--think how inefficient single family homes are
• his proposed city had large comfortable apartments for each family
  

• make it easy for factory workers to own homes
• but no saloons
• the canal was not finished and Love built only one factory
• the area became known as Love Canal and the partly dug canal became a municipal dump
• Hooker Chemical Company drained the canal and made it into a toxic waste disposal site in the 1940s
• the dump was closed and sealed in 1952 and a school and housing was built on top and around it, but many people in the area got sick
  
• it became the first Superfund toxic waste cleanup site

Niagara Falls Power company model village of Echota

• some architecture by the famous firm of McKim Mead and White

the common theme is that electricity will solve all the problems of the city

1901 Pan American Exposition


The fair was in Buffalo but promoted Niagara (and long distance power transmission)

• electric stoves for the home
• incubator babies

"progressive" view of history
assigned to native Americans the role of "before"
similarly in the Soviet Union

City Beautiful Movement