The North Tonawanda History Museum organization, moving ever closer to establishing a permanent home, is currently attempting to raise $50,000 for the project.
The group has found a historic 110-year-old building on the Erie Canal and plans to lease the first floor to transform it into a year-round museum. Donna Zellner Neal, museum director and the moving force behind the project, said, "We have good community support already. We need to make it all happen."
Plans also call for loft apartments, upscale apartments, a motel floor, little shops to service the tenants, and a possible parking ramp nearby.
"We also are working with the Antique and Classic Boat Society to have them also do a museum in the total project with us," Neal commented.
The red-brick building at 184 Sweeney St. was built in 1895 as a trolley barn and powerhouse for the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railway. It later housed the Herschell Spillman carousel manufacturing company and then the Remington Rand Printing plant.
Last summer the museum established temporary quarters in a former bakery on Oliver Street. Sarah Walker, the curator, said space is running out because of the many donations of artifacts and other items of historic reference being donated by history buffs.
An interactive part of a permanent museum would be a recreation of the profitable lumber industry of the 19th century, which gave North Tonawanda the sobriquet, The Lumber City. Ships would bring in lumber that would be distributed from the museum via horse-drawn carts to locations in the city where wood is still needed for building projects.
The history museum would also figure prominently in the organization's walking tours, which include the railroad museum, the Herschell Carrousel Museum, the Riviera Theatre, Gateway Park and the Carnegie Art Center.
There could also be rides on vintage-style packet boats on the Erie Canal, and trips in antique cars, trolley cars and horse-drawn carriages.
Built in 1895 as Power House #4 of the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Electric Railway Co., the red-brick building at 184 Sweeney St. served as a trolley barn. In 1899 it became the factory of a new company formed by Allan Herschell and his brother-in-law, Edward Spillman. The company, Herschell-Spillman, bought out Armitage-Herschell in 1903 and became the largest manufacturer of carousels in the United States.
Allan Herschell retired from this company and formed the Allan Herschell Co. in 1915, on the site of the present home of the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum on Thompson Street. In 1920 Herschell-Spillman reorganized into Spillman Engineering Corp., based at Oliver and Goundry streets, and continued to produce carousels and other amusement rides in competition with Allan Herschell Co.
In 1890, J.H. Rand Sr. invented the world's first visible ledger in North Tonawanda. It was in North Tonawanda in 1898 that Remington Rand first manufactured and marketed the forerunners of the systems, which were to revolutionize the record-keeping methods of modern business.
In 1925, the Rand Ledger Co. merged with the Kardex Co. to form the Remington Rand Co. and they purchased the Herschell-Spillman manufacturing plant at 184 Sweeney St. UNIVAC (Universal Automatic Computer) was produced by Remington Rand and was used by the United States Bureau of Census. In 1965, they employed nearly 1,000 area residents. The Sweeney Street plant was Remington's major printing facility.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | May 3 2005 |