The Electrifying Fall of Rainbow City

by Margaret Creighton

  20. Ida McKinley in mourning: Anthony, Ida McKinley, ebook, ch. 17. Improving health, death: Anthony, Ida McKinley, ebook, ch. 18.

  21. Buffalo steel; Exposition results; Buffalo booming: Courier, July 13, 1902; World’s Fair Bulletin 4 (December 1902): 16; Mark Goldman, City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007), 133–35. Needing hustle: Sarah Elvins, Sales & Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004), 39–40. Buffalo at midcentury: Elvins, Sales & Celebrations, 48;Goldman, City on the Edge, 99–129, 162–68; Courier Express, June 5, 1963.

  22. Saint Lawrence Seaway: Goldman, City on the Edge, 152–53, 315. Layoffs, plant closings: Goldman, City on the Edge, 308–11, 314; Goldman, City on the Lake, 177;Carol J. Loomis, “The Sinking of Bethlehem Steel,” Fortune Magazine, April 5, 2004; “82 Years of History in Lackawanna,” New York Times, December 28, 1982;Ardith Hilliard, David Venditta, eds., Forging America: The History of Bethlehem Steel (Allentown, PA: The Morning Call, 2010), accessed September 13, 2015, at http://www.mcall.com/all-bethsteel-printingchapter-8-htmlstory.html.

  23. Population: Census: https://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-07.pdf. Centennial meanings: See Michael Frisch’s thoughtful essay, “Prismatics, Multivalence, and Other Riffs on the Millennial Moment: Presidential Address to the American Studies Association,” American Quarterly 53 (2001): 193–231. On the virtual Pan-American, see Susan Eck’s pioneering website, “Doing the Pan,”at http://panam1901.org/. This site offers a visit to the exposition through a plethora of firsthand accounts and other primary sources; see also the University at Buffalo’s website on the Exposition, with essays on topics from architecture to African American history: http://library.buffalo.edu/pan-am/exposition/. Best-selling novel: Lauren Belfer, City of Light (New York: Dial Press, 1999). Other important centennial work: Kerry L. Grant, The Rainbow City: Celebrating Light, Color, and Architecture at the Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo 1901 (Buffalo: Canisius College Press, 2001);Leary and Sholes, Buffalo’s Pan-American. The Buffalo commemoration: Patrick Klinck, “As a Century Turns: Finding the Light Then and Now—The Pan-American Exposition,” UB Today (Winter 2000): 16–17. Gazing back: Randal C. Archibold, “Buffalo Gazes Back to a Time When Fortune Shone: Much-Maligned City Celebrates the Glory of a Century Ago,” New York Times, Sept. 7, 2001. New York and Buffalo: News, Aug. 30, 1901, quoting the Chicago Record-Herald; Mitchell Moss, Op-Ed, New York Times, March 28, 2010; see also the cartoon by Tom Toro in The New Yorker, Dec. 5, 2011. Buffalo rising: Author conversations with Leslie Zemsky, Mark Goldman, Steve Bell, Michael Frisch. See also Brian Hayden, “Buffalo’s Grain Elevators Reimagined,” accessed November 4, 2015, at http://www.visitbuffaloniagara.com/; and New York Times, Oct. 25, 2015; also, http://www.elkharttruth.com/news/national/2015/10/04/Buffalo-s-industrial-cathedrals-slowly-finding-new-life.html. Legacies, vestiges of Rainbow City: Mark Lozo to author, email correspondence, Sept. 14, 2015;Susan Eck to author, email correspondence, Sept. 30, 2015. It should also be noted that the Buffalo History Museum, along with Forest Lawn Cemetery and Explore Buffalo, offer popular Pan-American–focused tours, and that the museum’s Forest Avenue Resource Center opens its extensive Pan-American exhibit on regular occasions.

  24. World’s fairs: Munro, “Investigating World’s Fairs,” 80. Expositions in flux: Rydell, Findling, Pelle, Fair America, 118; Ocala [WA] StarBanner, May 16, 1974.

  Selected Bibliography

  SECONDARY SOURCES

  Adelson, Betty M. “Dwarfs: The Changing Lives of Archetypal ‘Curiosities’—and Echoes.” Disability Studies Quarterly 25, no. 3 (Summer 2005), http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/576/753. Accessed July 23, 2014.

  Aldrich, William S. “Mechanical and Electrical Features of the Pan-American Exposition.” The Engineering Magazine 21 (April to September 1901): 839–42.

  Anthony, Carl Sferrazza. Ida McKinley: The Turn of the Century First Lady Through War, Assassination, and Secret Disability. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2012.

  Barry, Richard H. Snap Shots on the Midway of the Pan-Am Expo. Buffalo: Robert Allan Reid, 1901.

  Beers, Diane L. For the Prevention of Cruelty: The History and Legacy of Animal Rights Activism. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006.

  Bogdan, Robert. Freak Show: Presenting Human Oddities for Amusement and Profit. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

  Briggs, L. Vernon. The Manner of Man That Kills: Spencer—Czolgosz—Richeson. Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1921.

  Brooks-Bertram, Peggy, and Barbara Seals Nevergold. Uncrowned Queens: African American Women Community Builders. Buffalo: Uncrowned Queens Publishing, 2005.

  “The Case of the Late President McKinley.” British Medical Journal 2 (November 1901): 1348–50.

  Chibbaro, Anthony. The Charleston Exposition. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001.

  Cromwell, Sara S. “Fair Treatment? African-American Presence at International Expositions in the South, 1884–1902.” MA thesis, Wake Forest University, 2010.

  DeToledo, John C., Bruno B. DeToledo, and Meredith Lowe. “The Epilepsy of First Lady Ida Saxton McKinley.” Southern Medical Journal 90, no. 3 (March 2000): 267–71.

  Du Bois, W. E. B. “The Negro Exhibit.” American Monthly Review of Reviews 22 (November 1990).

  Dussel, Ines. “Between Exoticism and Universalism: Educational Sections in Latin American Participation at International Exhibitions, 1860–1900.” Paedagogica Historica 47(October 2011): 601–17.

  Egan, Nancy. “Exhibiting Indigenous Peoples: Bolivians and the Chicago Fair of 1893.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 28 (January 1, 2010): 6–24.

  Elvins, Sarah. Sales & Celebrations: Retailing and Regional Identity in Western New York State, 1920–1940. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2004.

  Everett, Marshall. Complete Life of William McKinley and Story of his Assassination. Chicago: C. W. Stanton, 1901. http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc2.ark:/13960/t5fb4x97r;view=1up;seq=7.

  Ferguson, Kathy. “Discourses of Danger: Locating Emma Goldman.” Political Theory 36 (October 2008): 735–61.

  Fernandez-Bravo, Alvaro. “Ambivalent Argentina: Nationalism, Exoticism, and Latin Americanism at the 1889 Paris Universal Exposition.” Nepantla: Views from South 2 (January 2001): 115–39.

  Fine, Sidney. “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley.” American Historical Review 60 (July 1955): 777–79.

  Fisher, Jack C. Stolen Glory: The McKinley Assassination. La Jolla, CA: Alamar Books, 2001.

  Frisch, Michael. “Prismatics, Multivalence, and Other Riffs on the Millennial Moment: Presidential Address to the American Studies Association, 13 October 2000.” American Quarterly 53 (2001): 193–231.

  Ghartey-Tagoe, Amma Y. “The Battle Before the Souls of Black Folk: Black Performance in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition.” PhD diss., New York University, 2009.

  Gilbert, James. Whose Fair? Experience, Memory, and the History of the Great St. Louis Exposition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.

  Goldman, Mark. City on the Edge: Buffalo, New York. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2007.

  Goldman, Mark. City on the Lake: The Challenge of Change in Buffalo, New York. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990.

  Goldman, Mark. High Hopes: The Rise and Decline of Buffalo, New York. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983.

  Grant, Kerry L. The Rainbow City: Celebrating Light, Color, and Architecture at the Pan American Exposition, Buffalo 1901. Buffalo: Canisius College Press, 2001.

  James, Isabel Vaughan. The Pan-American Exposition (Adventures in Western New York History). Buffalo: Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society, 1961.

  Jayes, Janice Lee. The Illusion of Ignorance: Constructing the American Encounter with Mexico, 1877–1920. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2011.

  Jonnes, Jill. Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World. New York: Random House, 2004.


  Kachun, Mitch. “‘Big Jim’ Parker and the Assassination of William McKinley: Patriotism, Nativism, Anarchism, and the Struggle for African American Citizenship.” The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 9 (January 2010): 93–116.

  Kete, Kathleen. A Cultural History of Animals in the Age of Empire. London: Bloomsbury, 2011.

  Kootin, Amma Y. Ghartey-Tagoe. “Lessons in Blackbody Minstrelsy.” The Drama Review 57, no. 2 (Summer 2013): 102–22.

  Larson, Erik. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. New York: Crown, 2003.

  Leary, Thomas and Elizabeth Sholes. Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 1998.

  Loos, William H., Ami M. Savigny, Robert M. Gurn, and Lillian S. Williams. The Forgotten “Negro Exhibit”: African American Involvement in Buffalo’s Pan-American Exposition, 1901. Buffalo: Buffalo and Erie County Public Library and Library Foundation of Buffalo and Erie County, 2001.

  MacDonald, Carlos F. “The Trial, Execution, Autopsy and Mental Status of Leon F. Czolgosz, Alias Fred Nieman, the Assassin of President McKinley.” American Journal of Insanity 58 (January 1902): 369–86. http://mckinleydeath.com/documents/journals/AJI58-3b.htm. Accessed December 14, 2015.

  Martschukat, Jürgen. “‘The Art of Killing by Electricity’: The Sublime and the Electric Chair.” The Journal of American History 89, no. 3 (December 2002): 900–21.

  McHenry, Katherine V. “Color Scheme at the Pan American.” Brush and Pencil 8 (June 1901): 151–56.

  Moore, Sarah J. “Mapping Empire in Omaha and Buffalo: World’s Fairs and The Spanish-American War.” Bilingual Review/Editorial Bilingüe 25, no. 1 (January–April 2000): 111–26.

  Morgan, Howard Wayne. William McKinley and His America. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press: 2003.

  Munro, Lisa. “Investigating World’s Fairs: An Historiography.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 28 (2010): 80–94.

  Parker, LeRoy. “The Trial of the Anarchist Murderer Czolgosz.” Yale Law Journal 11, no. 2 (December 1901): 80–94.

  Peavler, David J. “African Americans in Omaha and the 1898 Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition.” Journal of African American History 93 (Summer 2008): 337–61.

  Perez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

  Rauchway, Eric. Murdering McKinley: The Making of Teddy Roosevelt’s America. New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.

  Rinehart, Melissa. “To Hell with the Wigs!: Native American Representation and Resistance at the World’s Columbian Exposition.” American Indian Quarterly 36, no. 4 (Fall 2012): 403–42.

  Rixey, Presley M., Matthew D. Mann, Herman Mynter, Roswell Park, Eugene Wasdin, Charles McBurney, and Charles G. Stockton. “The Case of President McKinley.” Medical Record 60 (October 1901): 601–6. http://mckinleydeath.com/documents/journals/MR60-16dp.htm. Accessed October 20, 2015.

  Rockwell, Mary Rech. “‘Let Deeds Tell’: Elite Women of Buffalo, 1880–1910.”PhD diss., State University of New York at Buffalo.

  Rydell, Robert W. “‘Darkest Africa’: African Shows at America’s World’s Fairs, 1893–1940.” In Africans on Stage, ed. Bernth Lindfors. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

  Rydell, Robert W., John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle. Fair America: World’s Fairs in the United States. Washington: Smithsonian Books, 2000.

  Rydell, Robert W. All the World’s a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

  Rydell, Robert W., and Nancy E. Gwinn, eds. Fair Representations: World’s Fairs and the Modern World. Amsterdam: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994.

  Ryder, Richard D. Animal Revolutions: Changing Attitudes Toward Speciesism. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2000.

  Severance, Frank H., ed. Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, Volume XI. New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907.

  Severance, Frank H., ed. Millard Fillmore Papers, Volume II. New York: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907.

  Scharff, Virginia. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. New York: Free Press, 1991.

  Sherman, Matthew C. “Protecting the First Citizen of the Republic: Presidential Security from Thomas Jefferson to Theodore Roosevelt.” PhD diss., Saint Louis University, 2011.

  Shupe, Kevin D. “Geronimo Escapes: Envisioning Indianness in Modern America.” PhD diss., George Mason University, 2011.

  Stencell, Al. “Frank Bostock in America.” National Fairground Archive, Sheffield University, UK. http://www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/jungle/index1a1.html.Accessed August 13, 2014.

  “The Surgical and Medical Treatment of President McKinley.” Journal of Medicine and Science 7 (October 1901): 389–90. http://mckinleydeath.com/documents/journals/JMSc7-11bp.htm. Accessed December 15, 2015.

  Tenorio-Trillo, Mauricio. Mexico at the World’s Fairs: Crafting a Modern Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.

  Thomson, Rosemarie Garland. Extraordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Disability in American Culture and Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

  Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ed. Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

  Turner, C. Y. “The Pan-American Color Scheme.” The Independent 53 (April 1901): 948–49.

  Vials, Chris. “The Despotism of the Popular: Anarchy and Leon Czolgosz at the Turn of the Century.” Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture 3 (Fall 2004). http://www.americanpopularculture.com/journals/articles/fall_2004/vials.htm. Accessed October 8, 2015.

  Walden, Keith. Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of Late Victorian Culture. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1997.

  Whalen, Dwight. The Lady Who Conquered Niagara: The Annie Edson Taylor Story. Bailey Island, ME: EGA Books, 1990.

  PRIMARY SOURCES

  Annual Report of the Board of Police of the City of Buffalo. Buffalo: Wenborne-Sumner Co., 1902.

  Annual Report of the Erie County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Buffalo: Turner & Porter, 1901.

  Baird, Frank. Diary. Private Collection.

  Barnes, Mabel E. “Peeps at the Pan-American. An account of Personal Visits in the Summer of 1901 from Notes jotted down on the Spot and put in Permanent form during Fourteen Years.” Buffalo: Buffalo History Museum Archives, Mss. W-119.

  Bennitt, Mark, The Pan-American Exposition and How to See It. Buffalo: The Goff Company, 1901.

  Buchanan, William I. Pan American Exposition: Report of William I. Buchanan, Director-General, 1902. Buffalo: Special Collections, Buffalo and Erie County Public Library.

  Channing, Walter, M.D., Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

  Dunlap, Orrin E. “Interview with Mrs. Taylor.” October 25, 1901. Unpublished manuscript. Stunts and Stunters file. Local History Collection, Niagara Falls (NY) Public Library.

  Frank C. Bostock’s Grand Zoological Congress and Trained Animal Arena. Buffalo: Courier Co., 1901.

  Pan American Exposition Buffalo: Its Purpose and Plan. Buffalo: Pan-American Exposition Company, 1901. http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/ref/collection/p268001coll12/id/6749. Accessed October 1, 2015.

  Park, Roswell. “Reminiscences of McKinley Week.” Buffalo: Buffalo History Museum Archives, Mss. A00-390.

  Taylor, Annie Edson. Over the Falls: Annie Edson Taylor’s Story of Her Life. Privately printed, 1902.

  Wells, Ida B., ed. “The Reason Why the Colored American is not in the World’s Columbian Exposition.” Chicago, 1893. Accessed December 14, 2015. http://www.loc.gov/resource/mfd.25023/?sp=1.

  Williams, Edward T. “Martha E. Wagenfuhrer, ‘Maid of the Rapids.’” Unpublished manuscript. Stunts and Stunters file. Local History Collection, Niagara Falls [NY] Public Library.

  Williams, Edward T. “Maud Willard Meets Death in Whirlpoo
l.” Unpublished manuscript. Stunts and Stunters file. Local History Collection, Niagara Falls [NY] Public Library.

  NEWSPAPERS

  Bay City [Michigan] Times-Press, 1901–1902

  Bay City [Michigan] Tribune, 1901

  Buffalo Commercial, 1899–1902

  Buffalo Courier, 1899–1902

  Buffalo Enquirer, 1899–1902

  Buffalo Evening News, 1899–1903

  Buffalo Morning Express, 1899–1903

  Buffalo Times, 1900–1901

  Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1902

  Erie [Pennsylvania] Morning Dispatch, 1901–1903

  Niagara Falls Gazette, 1901–1902; 1921

  Niagara Falls Journal, 1901, 1902, 1914

  Pan-American Herald, 1899–1901

  Pan American Magazine, 1900–1901

  TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS

  Frank C. Bostock v. Espiridiona Alice Cenda Woeckener, Equity Case No. 27, November Term, 1902, Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia Archives.

  The People of the State of New York v. Leon F. Czolgosz. Unpublished trial transcript, September 23–24, 26, 1901. Accessed December 12, 2015. http://mckinleydeath.com/documents/govdocs/transcript.htm.

  WEBSITES

  Eck, Susan. “Doing the Pan.” http://panam1901.org/. Accessed December 12, 2015.

  “Mckinley Assassination Ink: A Documentary History of William McKinley’s Assassination.” http://mckinleydeath.com/. Accessed December 12, 2015.

  Old Fulton New York Post Cards. http://fultonhistory.com/. Accessed December 12, 2015.

  “Pan-American Exposition of 1901.” University at Buffalo. library.buffalo.edu/pan-am/. Accessed January 1, 2016.

  “Pan-American Exposition Scrapbooks.” Buffalo and Erie County Public Library/New York Heritage Digital Collections. http://www.nyheritage.org/collections/pan-american-exposition-scrapbooks. Accessed January 1, 2016.

  Index