The Buttery Elevators

John M. Buttery, who purchased an old saw mill in the 1850s, first provided public access to the Whirlpool Rapids by way of a rickety stairway there, then abandoned the mill and built a safer stairway into the gorge as the site grew into a popular tourist destination. In 1869, to improve access further, he built the Buttery Elevators on land bought from DeVeaux College for Orphans and Destitute Children. Powered by a water wheel, the elevators were operated by the Buttery family for more than 20 years. In 1889 the family formed the Whirlpool Rapids Company, and in 1893 a new longer shaft with double elevator cars was built, along with an electric plant that lit a park, the elevators, and the rapids. To draw more visitors, the company successfully sought an extension of the Niagara Falls Street Railway to the property, including construction of a tunnel and the extension of Spring Avenue from Bellvue Avenue to Chasm Avenue. The property was eventually sold to the Gorge Railroad. In 1899 a windstorm destroyed the original elevator building, and a rockslide nearly ruined the machinery in the newer one; in 1901 the city of Niagara Falls burned them in a controlled fire. Buttery, born in Homer, New York, arrived in Lewiston around 1830, married Priscilla Nichols in 1835, took an active part in the 1837 Canadian Rebellion, and supervised excavation of the Through Cut of the Lewiston and Niagara Falls Railroad. Priscilla, born in Roxbury, Vermont, in 1813, moved with her family to western New York in 1816 and to a farm in Lewiston in 1820; she was a school teacher, the mother of ten, and after her husband's death managed the Buttery Elevators for 16 years.

Niagara Falls, New York · United States