Reviews of Ontario Power Company Gate House (Architect)

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The Ontario Power Company Generating Station is a former generating station located along the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada, just below the Horseshoe Falls. In 1890, the US Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company and its subsidiary Cataract Company formed the International Niagara Commission composed of experts, to analyze proposals to harness Niagara Falls on the US/Canada border to generate power. They settled on alternating current, or AC, electricity as being the preferred transmission method and, after going through many proposals. In 1893, they awarded the generating contract to Westinghouse Electric with further transmission lines and transformer contracts awarded to General Electric. Work began in 1893 and in November 1896, power generated from Niagara Falls at the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant was being sent to Buffalo, New York as well as the Niagara Falls plants of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company which needed large quantities of cheap electricity for smelting aluminum. The power that was transmitted to New York State was then sold in bulk to Niagara Lockport and Ontario Power Company, a New York company, which was then distributed to individual customers. The largest individual consumers of power from these lines included several entities with direct ties to Albright: The Lackawanna Steel Company, Empire State Railway, New York Central Railroad, the Shenandoah Steel Wire Company, the Syracuse Rapid Transit Railway Company, the Lockport Gas and Electric Light Company, the Auburn Light Heat and Power Company, the Erie Railroad Company, and the Genesee County Electric Light Power and Gas Company. The plant was upgraded from 25 Hz to 60 Hz power under the supervision of Roy F. Potvin from 1972 through to 1976. The plant continued to operate until 1999 when Ontario Power Generation (formerly Ontario Hydro) decommissioned the Ontario Power Company Generating Station from service in order to accommodate the construction of Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort, built on the former transformer building location. As of 2015, the 1905 Generating Station along the Niagara River edge is owned by the Niagara Parks Commission, and sits abandoned.