Before Niagara's Love Canal

I have noticed something about the Love Canal, and Niagara Falls NY, that I have never seen pointed out.

The Love Canal was America's first federal disaster that was not a natural disaster. This means that it was deemed eligible to receive assistance from the national government.

In the late Nineteenth Century Niagara Falls attracted all kinds of people with great ideas. One was named William Love. He wanted to dig a canal from the upper Niagara River northward to the Niagara Escarpment. Below the escarpment he would build Model City. The water falling over the escarpment would generate electricity to power the city and then go to irrigate a wide area of farmland.

The raw Capitalism of the time was subject to highs and lows. Investors lost interest in the project and William Love ran out of money. The part of the canal that had been dug was abandoned. Model City is still there today but never grew beyond a hamlet.

The abandoned canal was in the village of LaSalle, which had earlier been separated from the Town of Niagara. In 1927 LaSalle joined the city of Niagara Falls. The electricity generated by the hydroelectric potential at Niagara Falls attracted industry, particularly the manufacture of chemicals.

Aluminum, for example, is a useful metal and is abundant. You may notice that there are no references to aluminum before modern times, in contrast to other common metals. That is because aluminum cannot be separated from it's ore by smelting. It requires electrolysis and the power generated at Niagara Falls was instrumental in developing the modern aluminum industry.

The manufacture of chemicals produces waste and the idea arose of using the abandoned canal to bury wastes in. It was purchased by Hooker Chemical in the 1940s. Many thousands of tons of dangerous waste was buried, and sealed with a clay cap. The land was turned over to the Niagara Falls School Board. The company made no secret of the fact that dangerous chemicals were buried there. The land could be used for a park or parking lot but absolutely not for building where there would be digging into the ground.

But the area was developed in the 1950s anyway. Two elementary schools, a nice residential neighborhood and, a housing project were built there. During digging for the construction the clay barrier was breached numerous times.

By the 1970s it was becoming increasingly obvious that the neighborhood built over the chemicals had a high rate of cancer and birth defects. In early 1977 there was an unusual blizzard. Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, and the only one that freezes over if it gets cold enough. The lake had frozen and then heavy snow piled up on the frozen lake. Next, very strong winds picked up the snow off the frozen lake and deposited it across western New York and southern Ontario. This is known as the "Blizzard of '77" and was the worst blizzard for the Buffalo area until 2022.

When spring of 1977 came the tremendous amount of snow melted. Just south of the Love Canal area the LaSalle Expressway had been built where there was once train tracks. This hindered the runoff of the water to the Niagara River and this water caused the chemicals to emerge much more quickly from the ground. I remember being in that neighborhood, in the Summer of 1977, and there was a faint scent of chemicals. 

The following summer, 1978, residents were evacuated and it was declared a disaster area. The following image from Google Earth shows the approximate area where chemicals were buried. The black roof in the northeast corner is the former Summit Park Mall.

Volumes have been written about the Love Canal. But what happened before the Love Canal? The abandoned canal was purchased in the 1940s for the chemical waste. A particular question is that the canal was purchased in the 1940s, but chemical production had been going on in Niagara Falls since the late Nineteenth Century, so where was the waste going before then?

One day I noticed something interesting. A section of Colvin Blvd, just adjacent to the Love Canal dumping ground, is much wider than the rest of the street and the other streets. There are grass islands along the center of the wide section of the street. I realized that the street was wide to facilitate the movement of trucks bringing in the waste, and the grass islands were put in afterward to narrow the street. Image from Google Street View.

What I also notice is that there are two residential areas in Niagara Falls where the houses are at least twenty years newer than the houses on either side. 

Let's go to an area of Niagara Falls, about six and a half km to the west of the Love Canal, where the houses are about twenty years newer than the houses all around, going by information on real estate sites. The older homes were built in the 1920s and the newer ones in the 1940s. 

This is the area around Gaskill Middle School, immediately west of Hyde Park Blvd. There was a small paper factory on the corner of Pine Avenue and Hyde Park Blvd, owned by the businessman who would get Hyde Park named for him, but no record of any factory or major building that would take up this site.

The area is shown enclosed from Google Earth. The green area across Hyde Park Blvd from the enclosed area is Hyde Park.

There is something that leads me to believe that this must have been some kind of dumping ground, that was developed as a residential area after the dump was closed. The main east-west street in the image, just south of the enclosed area, is Pine Avenue. There are two residential streets immediately north of, and parallel to, Pine Avenue, and right at the boundary of the enclosed area. These residential streets are Grand and Independence Avenues.

What is so puzzling is how wide these two streets are, and both have grass islands running along the center of the street, just like at the Love Canal. Both of these residential streets are actually wider than Pine Avenue, which is the main street. A rough measurement with Google Earth shows that the two residential streets are 15 meters wide, including the grass islands. Pine Avenue is 13 meters wide and nearby parallel residential streets are only 10 meters wide. 

Why, of all the residential streets in the city, are these two so wide and with grass islands down the center? This is an ordinary working class neighborhood. Why are there grass islands on only these two residential streets and not on the main streets, Pine Avenue and Hyde Park Blvd? These grass islands cost money and require continuous maintenance and grass cutting, so why were they put there?

There is a simple and obvious explanation. The enclosed area was once a dumping site and the two streets were built especially wide to facilitate the continuous transport of waste to the site, just like at the Love Canal. This was done on side streets so as not to disrupt the main road, Pine Avenue. After the dumping site was closed houses were built on it, just like at the Love Canal, which explains why the houses are so much newer, and the grass islands were put down the centers of Grand and Independence Avenues to narrow them.

Now let's go to still another neighborhood of Niagara Falls, NY, about 2 km west of the neighborhood along Pine Avenue and Hyde Park Blvd. Running between Main and Whirlpool Streets is a one-block street called Orchard Parkway. It also has a grass island along the center. Like Grand and Independence Avenues it is considerably wider than parallel streets, actually about 4 meters wider. The first of the following images, both from Google Earth, shows the location of Orchard Parkway. Canada is to the left of the lower Niagara River.

The above image shows how Orchard Parkway, on the left, forms a straight line with the entrance to the library and former YMCA, on the right. This is because the running track, basketball courts and, parking lot is on what was once another dumping site. The area between the two, in the triangle formed by Main Street and Portage Road, has always been a parking lot, even though it would have been prime real estate in the long-ago glory days of the area, because it had a main street on both sides. This is because it was part of the route to the dumping site. The waste was carried along this route so as not to disrupt the busy Main Street, the same as waste was carried to the above site so as not to disrupt Pine Avenue.

Now let's move our attention to yet another neighborhood, back towards the Love Canal, about 2 km west of it. It is also along the LaSalle Expressway, which was once train tracks, but to the south of it. 

The enclosed area, in the following image from Google Earth, is the 100, 200 and, 300 blocks of 75th and 76th Streets, and the 7500 block of Stephenson Avenue. Running some addresses on real estate sites shows that the houses in the enclosed area are, on average, at least twenty years newer than the houses on either side, on 74th and 77th Streets. Those houses were built in the 1920s while the ones in the enclosed area were built in the 1940s.

The building just south of the enclosed area, with the white roof, is now called LaSalle Prep School. It was opened in 1931. The enclosed area includes the athletic field of the school. The residential area to the north is newer and was mostly farm plots when the neighborhood to the south was built. Some east-west streets north of the expressway are discontinuous because they were originally farm roads and the farm plots were of different shapes and sizes.

The enclosed area was valuable property near the river and I can find no reason why it wouldn't have been developed along with the areas to both sides. There is no record of a factory or major building occupying the site. It was along the rail line, which is now the LaSalle Expressway, but there was no train station on this site. There were several train stations in Niagara Falls, but all were downtown. In LaSalle there was just a platform for passengers to wait on. There must be some reason why this enclosed area wasn't developed along with the areas on both sides.

Another thing that links these two neighborhoods, on nearly opposite sides of the city, are the two schools, both with white roofs, that we see adjacent to each neighborhood. At 75th Street it is LaSalle Prep School and at Hyde Park Blvd it is Gaskill Middle School. The two are like sibling schools, built at the same time and hosting 7th and 8th grades, except that LaSalle has an athletic field while Gaskill doesn't. Both schools opened in 1931.

But a dumping site usually wouldn't extend all the way to be visible from the main road. Each school was built on the main road after the older homes had been built but before the newer ones. Although the dump in each case wouldn't extend to the main road the property lot would. That was the logical place to build each of the schools.

In the following image from Google Earth, Perry Avenue is the east-west street near the top of the image. It does not form a continuous straight line because the middle section of the street is displaced northward, between 75th and 76th Streets, to make room for the athletic field at LaSalle Prep School. Since the houses on either side are considerably older than the school that means the displaced section of Perry Avenue wasn't even there at one time. That is because the site was probably a dumping ground that was developed after the site was closed.

It was likely some kind of dumping ground but, unlike the other two, there are no wide streets with grass islands. But it is along what was the train tracks. The waste might have been transported from the factory district by train or there could have been service roads along the tracks. The Love Canal area was along the same train tracks, which is now the LaSalle Expressway. The broad street with the grass islands that we saw, Colvin Blvd, are at the north of the Love Canal area while the railroad is at the south.

There is another residential street in the city with grass islands. 84th Street is actually by far the widest residential street in the city, about 19 meters wide. But it leads from the main road, Buffalo Avenue, to what was once the railroad and is right by the business district of the former village of LaSalle. I believe it was an access point to the railroad and not associated with any dumping ground.

These three sites in Niagara Falls are likely former dumping grounds. It is very interesting how in two of the neighborhoods the newer houses were built in the 1940s, meaning the dump site had been closed by then, which is the same decade that the Love Canal was purchased as a dump site. But I cannot say whether each one of them were used for chemical waste or for ordinary garbage. 

One thing that makes the Love Canal different from the other three is that the water runoff was hindered by the LaSalle Expressway. This does explain the precedent of what happened at the Love Canal, closing a dump site and then building a school and a residential neighborhood on it. Also, of course, putting grass islands to narrow the streets that were built wide to facilitate the waste being transported there by truck.

I just got to wondering why there are five streets in the city, all residential streets, that have grass islands along the center, and one of them just happened to be right at the Love Canal. The area of the Love Canal was once one of the nicest neighborhoods anywhere but did anyone wonder about these grass islands along the wide section of Colvin Blvd? Seen across the center of the following image from Google Earth. There is also a Colvin Blvd in Tonawanda, this is not the same street.