(2 of 2)
Toilet Bowl. After the turn of the century, the falls fell on hard times. The Ontario side, which had once been awash with bars, went dry in 1916, and so, in consequence, did the tourist trade. The New York side, a pioneering area for hydroelectric power, became an unsightly clutter of high tension wires, oil tanks, highways and factories that spat foul industrial waste into the river. One critic called it "the toilet bowl of America." Explains the current Democratic Mayor, E. Dent Lackey: "Tourism became a byproduct. If people wanted to come and look at the falls, O.K. But nobody cared much."
Trade did not really pick up again until 1957, when Niagara Falls, Ont., voted to reopen its bars. Encouraged, several Canadian businessmen modified a well-known name and put up Louis Tussaud's English Wax Museum, featuring such vivid spectacles as the slow death of Nelson, whose chest actually heaves as he expires on deck. Niagara Falls, N.Y., tidied up its parks, built a big new aquarium that opened last week, began constructing a monorail, and initiated a $27.5 million urban-renewal project that will include a $7,000,000 John F. Kennedy Convention Hall. The city also built a tower that rises 282 ft. from the base of the falls, giving an unsurpassed closeup of the U.S. side.
One of the two Canadian towers, the 325-ft. Seagram, goes one step better than the one on the U.S. side, allows the tourist to enjoy the view over dinner. A third tower, called the Skylon, is due to open in August; it will boast a restaurant 700 ft. above the falls that will revolve once every hour, so that diners can contemplate Buffalo over their Beefeater, Toronto over the tournedos, the cataracts over coffee.
Rubble Removal. Even the falls are to be face-lifted. Until 1962, when control gates were installed to spread the flow, the 1,000,000 gallons of water that gushed over the crest of the cataracts each second were eroding the falls at the rate of 3 to 4 ft. a year. Worse still, two tremendous rock slides on the U.S. side have reduced their height as much as 40 ft. and piled thousands of tons of debris at the base. A multimillion-dollar federal project is now being considered to remove the rubble below. Not that most honeymooners care. The average newly wed couple, the natives complain, leaves the resort without even seeing the falls.
* Nor did his disparaging remarks discourage Wild Willie, his older brother, from honeymooning there in 1891.