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Editor's note: H. William Feder, Ph.D., is the author of The Evolution of An Ethnic Neighborhood That Became United in Diversity: The East Side, Niagara Falls, New York, 1880-1930. A revised edition recently was released.
Q: Tell me about the methodology you used in writing this book.
A: One was folklore. When I say folklore, I'm talking about several categories. Newspapers are, in a sense, popular folklore. You do have over a period of several years a potential story line against which you can test theories and concepts, and that's what I did. And then, of course, I ended up with a couple thousand pages of oral history, as well. And I tried to write this in the vernacular of the people I talked to.
Q: What kind of response has the work received?
A: Writing the book was a journey for me, and then the work itself has been on a journey. For example, a copy was raffled off for $110 at an arts fund raiser. I've had orders from California, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Texas and Florida. There was a gentleman who bought one for himself and a lady friend, and he would read part of a chapter to her every night, and in the morning they would go back, take the maps and revisit much of this and attempt to say, "Well, does he have it right or doesn't he?"
Q: How many copies did you print?
A: There's now a total of 500 out there. The first printing was 200, and we sold about 180. One of the differences between the old edition and the new one is the quality of the photographs is better. This is the only book with a picture of the first voting machine.
Q: The photo on the cover shows a view from the old Nabisco factory?
A: They called it the Yellow Palace of Light. There were 13,000 panes of glass. And there was a whole culture associated with this. They were especially helpful to women. This was a great place for immigrants to begin. (Henry D.) Perky (founder of the Shredded Wheat Co.) himself was what I consider a progressive in many ways. He was very concerned with making sure that Shredded Wheat did things for the families and for people's health. Of course, he also advocated that eating meat was unnecessary because the meat was in the wheat. And he also brought in people like Jacob Riis, who was a great friend of Teddy Roosevelt and helped reform tenement house buildings in New York City. Riis did a lantern show, and they were talking about dealing with the slums and all that. Perky helped bring Riis in because they were going to reform the whole Tunnel Town area. And one of the fellows in the back at this meeting said, "Our problem isn't poverty. Everyone is working here. Our problem is simple drainage." They had 29 people die from typhoid here.
Q: How long did it take you to research and write this?
A: My doctoral program took eight years, but the writing took four and half years. My advisor's specialty was the history of women in education, and that was a good revelation for me. I tried to take much of what I had come to understand and apply it to the local scene.
Q: Immigration was a big part of Niagara Falls history and you deal with that extensively in your book.
A: Niagara Falls had the highest percentage of immigrants of any city in the state outside of New York City. What are you going to do with all these immigrants? This is 1915 or 1916, you've got World War I and people got suspicious. On one side of Niagara Street by 10th Street, to the north was 100 percent American citizens by birth or naturalization. The south side was 100 percent alien. What a dividing line! Some of this was ethnic convenience. If you speak another language, you're more comfortable in an area with other immigrants who speak your language. When they were digging the tunnel under the city, the great tunnel, there was some suspicion because of anarchists. So the county, not the state, built an armory at Sixth and Walnut, which later became the first City Hall, which later became the first tourism convention center. Niagara Falls became the site of the first KKK (Ku Klux Klan) convention in the state in 1923. You had 5,000 Klansmen on the street in a parade.
Q: And industrialization is a big part of the story, too.
A: I reconstructed the story of the mainstream society in putting together a city, a city that was anticipating that they would be the first city to have immediate industrialization and immediate urbanization because of electrification. They met at a place called the arcade: the Board of Education, the city government, the power company. This became a place where hilltop society, you might say, were getting together and preparing to create a metropolis for managing a new civilization. They saw nothing but prosperity. They knew there was going to be a remarkable amount of growth.What do you do when for the first time in your life you have immediacy? If you had a car, you had to go out and crank your car. You had to fill up your lights with oil. The immediacy is limited. Suddenly, with the flip of a light switch, power is democratized for the first time.
Q: But how long did it take for the people in Tunnel Town?
A: Tunnel Town is interesting because you had maybe 28 different ethnic groups. As electricity was made available, a new plant would go in on Buffalo Avenue and two or three new ethnic groups would move in. What I did is connect all of this.
Q: How did you get interested in Tunnel Town?
A: In 1960, I took a course with a fellow named Frank McGovern and he kept talking about Tunnel Town and it had a terrible reputation, and I said, I want to know. I want to see it. I was always curious and I always wanted to get into this. I started, I guess, nine years ago now. When I first started my doctoral program, I wanted to do that. I created a focus area and created themes within this concept that all tie together.