1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Niagara Falls, New York

NIAGARA FALLS, a city of Niagara county, New York, U.S.A., on the E. side of the Niagara river, at the Falls, 22 m. N.N.W. of Buffalo. Pop. (1900) 19,457, of whom 7326 were foreign-born, (1910 census) 30,445. The city is served by the New York Central & Hudson River, the Wabash, the Erie, the Lehigh Valley, the West Shore and the Michigan Central railways, and by the International Electric railway and the Niagara, St Catharines & Toronto (electric) railway. The city extends along the level summit of the cliffs from above the Falls to some 3 m. below. The river is here crossed by three bridges; the (upper) steel arch bridge, built (1895) on the site of the former suspension bridge (built in 1869; blown down in 1889; rebuilt as a suspension bridge) near the Falls, is crossed by double carriageways and footpaths and by an electric railway, and is probably the longest bridge of the kind in the world, being 1240 ft. long with an arch span of 840 ft.; and 11/2 m. farther down the river are two railway bridges, the Michigan Central’s cantilever bridge, completed in 1883, and the (lower) single steel arch bridge (completed in 1897, on the site of John A. Roebling’s suspension bridge built in 1851–1856) of the Grand Trunk railway, which has a terminus at Niagara Falls (Clifton), Ontario, and connects here with the New York Central & Hudson River and the Lehigh Valley railways.

The principal buildings of the city are the Niagara Falls Memorial Hospital, the Federal Building and the Niagara Falls Power Co. Building. The city has a Carnegie library, De Veaux College (Protestant Episcopal, chartered in 1853), and Niagara University, a Roman Catholic institution, founded in 1856 by the priests of the Congregation of the Mission and incorporated in 1863 as the Seminary of Our Lady of Angels, a name still used for the theological department, but displaced, since the charter of the university in 1883, by the present name. In the extreme S.W. part of the city is Prospect Park, which with Goat Island immediately S., and several smaller islands, has been, since 1885, the “New York State Reservation at Niagara Falls.” From the Falls, which gave the city its first importance as a stopping place for tourists, valuable electric and hydraulic power is derived (by a tunnel 29 ft. deep and 18 ft. wide, passing about 200 ft. under the surface of the city, from the upper steel arch bridge to a point 11/4 m. above the Falls, and by the canal of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company). Niagara Falls is an important manufacturing city; the value of the factory products increased from $8,540,184 in 1900 to $16,915,786 in 1905, or 98·1%. The city is the shipping centre for the W. part of Niagara county. The village of Niagara Falls was for a time called Manchester. In 1892 the village of Suspension Bridge (formerly Niagara City) was joined with it under a city charter, which has been frequently amended.