Buffalo Rising Online

Feb 29th, 9:05am By STEEL

The 2008 winter edition of WNY Heritage Magazine featured an unusual subject in its regular column entitled "Last Look". The column is dedicated to endangered landmarks and places in WNY. It is intended to give publicity to the impending doom facing important cultural and historic assets, most of which are very old classically styled buildings threatened with demolition. The winter "Last Look" is unusual because it documents the relatively new modern styled Winter Garden in Niagara Falls. John Conlin writes in WNY Heritage:

The WInter Garden is not structurally flawed, nor is it less of an architectural wonder than it was when it opened 30 years ago. However, the Building is now, sadly, on the fast track for demolition. How is this possible?

The soaring glass building was conceived of as part of the far-reaching Rainbow Mall revitalization project for downtown Niagara Falls. It was designed by world-renowned architect Cesar Pelli and opened in 1977 to great fanfare and expansive expectations. Pictured here on the cover of a Pelli monograph from 1980, the distinctive glass-house with its lacy structure was originally filled with tropical gardens, which could be enjoyed from many levels as a complex weave of elevators and catwalks allowed visitors to walk through the treetops. It was thought that this building would become a year-round central meeting place and focal point of a new Niagara Falls. The design stretched across Falls Street (Rainbow Mall) and was detailed to allow new buildings to plug into its north and south sides (Eventually the Rainbow Center Mall was added to the north and a hotel to the south). So what went wrong and why is this building doomed? This is the case of the right building in the wrong place at the wrong time. The roots of its failure were sewn even before the first building was demolished in Niagara Falls' old and now long gone downtown.

Niagara Falls is thought of as a tourist town down on its luck. In actuality The Falls is an industrial town down on its luck. The advent of electric power attracted energy hungry manufacturers who set up shop just above the rapids. Tourism was a quaint sideline which gave this city its world renowned image but, the real might of the falls was its huge industrial output centered on chemical production. At one time Niagara Falls was one of the largest chemical producing centers in the world. Just a short few miles from the tourist traps, massive industrial plants spewed pollution while making many of the materials that propelled the modern world and the new products it craved. In this town, tourism was a niche. The real wealth and power came from chemicals.

Today, the Falls has lost virtually all of that industry while tourism now exists on life support. Niagara Falls, New York officials and civic leaders have looked over the gorge longingly at the booming Canadian side as a new skyline sprung up virtually overnight. After decades of neglect and mismanagement of the tourism industry on the New York side, Niagara Falls civic leaders are once again talking about initiating changes to make it the major travel destination they believe if can and should be.

The last time Niagara Falls re-planned its future on a large scale was in the mid-1970's when the huge Rainbow Center was proposed. In the fashion of the day, Niagara Falls' old, warn, and complex downtown would be wiped away. It would be replaced with a rational composition of large new buildings centered on a pedestrian spine surrounded by massive parking ramps. The focal point would be a grand new convention center designed by Philip Johnson. It is no accident that the model image of the plan (shown here) looks remarkably similar to a suburban shopping mall. It was those malls that were in the process of decimating downtowns across the country. That plan was largely carried out, but left major unfinished gaps. It may be unprecedented to this day in the relative scope of removal and reconstruction it brought to an American downtown landscape. The changes wrought on downtown Niagara Falls as a result of this plan have now been thoroughly discredited and are often ranked along with the UB Amherst campus in the top tier of bad WNY decision making.

If you analyze how this massive plan was carried out you can see how its failure is rooted in Niagara Falls history. Major elements of its makeup are not tourist oriented at all. Two large buildings were corporate headquarters buildings for Carborundum Company and Hooker Chemicals. Then, both of these companies were taken over by larger companies, which shrunk WNY operations soon after completion of these buildings. Neither building held any retail or tourist uses. The hotel fronting on the new Rainbow Mall pedestrian-way (old Falls Street) had no tourist-oriented retail space at street level. A blank empty colonnade along the pedestrian mall was the only draw. The hotel sprawls out horizontally with corporate efficiency but is too low to give views of the falls to its guests. Centered at the east end of the pedestrian mall axis is the distinctively shaped convention center. The huge building was composed with a massive arc shaped roof, which draws its inspiration from the rainbows, which are ever present over the Falls. A huge sculptural sunken plaza fronts the convention center separating it from the rest of the new downtown. Surrounding everything is parking, conveniently isolating the core from the city.

The original plan called for the new Rainbow Mall pedestrian spine to run in an uninterrupted axis from the convention center to the edge of the gorge. As built, the axis is there… but it kind of peters out by the time it gets close to the falls. The casual tourist would have a tough time recognizing this as an important pathway to tourist activities.

Eventually, the Winter Garden was built across the axis creating a dead ended dead mall, and that is basically what has sealed its death warrant. Sitting astride the main path from the falls to downtown, this elegant white elephant is now scheduled for demolition to open up this axis and make way for new development (the adjacent hotel is also scheduled to come down - I am unaware of any plans for the Rainbow Mall shopping center). The legacy of that 1970's plan is not pretty. The Hooker Chemical building, once an engineering marvel with its double glass skin, sits empty adjacent to a giant water-filled hole. The Rainbow Mall shopping center is a massive empty hulk. Long empty spaces on the pedestrian mall have been filled with uninspired commercial buildings in recent years. The former Carborundum office building has most recently been used as an aeronautical museum (scheduled to move to Buffalo). The convention center, of course, Is now the Seneca Niagara Casino. The glorious sunken plaza out front has now been ingloriously converted to a parking lot.

There are signs of positive change with promised plans for more. The Senecas have brought the biggest investment the city has seen in years and plans call for another major hotel tower addition to their complex. Many, however, decry the lack of spin-off development from the casino. The beautiful old United Office Building (thankfully spared from the wrecking ball back in the 70's) is currently being renovated with completion expected soon into a mix of office, hotel and residential space. Also, the State is promising major renovation and upgrades to the State Park. Still, this city faces major obstacles that require major solutions.

The last time civic leaders came to this conclusion they got the solution desperately wrong. Will they get it right this time as they make big plans to undo the urban renewal of the past? Niagara Falls is perhaps WNY's most important asset. The Falls is a landmark – well known throughout the world. It is a marketing attraction with few rivals except that in its current condition this city functions more as an albatross to WNY. It is a name brand without a name brand product to sell. The governor recently promised big changes in Niagara Falls. Then again, so did the last governor. It will be interesting to see if changes in the near future can finally unwrap the pot of gold that is Niagara Falls. In the mean time, take one last look at the Winter Garden before it is gone. It is quite a nice building. However be warned, in its present state and surroundings you might have to squint a little to get good appreciation of its real elegance.

Black and white images are from "The New Downtowns, Rebuilding Business Districts" by Louis G. Redstone, copyright 1976 by McGraw-Hill Inc.

Color image is from " Cesar Pelli" by John Pastier, copyright 1980