The New Wonder of the World: Buffalo, the Electric City

In the 1890s, Buffalo, New York stood at the threshold of an extraordinary transformation. A. E. Richmond captures the giddy optimism of a city about to become the world's first fully electrified metropolis, powered by the thundering waters of Niagara Falls. This is not merely a local history but a time capsule of American industrial ambition at its most exhilarated, documenting how the harnessing of hydroelectric power promised to reshape everything from factories to streetcars to the very fabric of urban life. Richmond writes with the breathless conviction of someone who truly believed Buffalo would become the 'Electric City' and a new wonder of the world. The result is a fascinating window into late 19th-century technological utopianism, when Americans believed electricity would cure every ill and transform every city into something gleaming and new.