History of the Niagara Falls Power Company, 1886-1918, Vol. 2 of 2: Evolution of Its Central Power Station and Alternating Current System; Construction and Operation (Classic Reprint)
(Excerpt from History of the Niagara Falls Power Company, ...)
Excerpt from History of the Niagara Falls Power Company, 1886-1918, Vol. 2 of 2: Evolution of Its Central Power Station and Alternating Current System; Construction and Operation
Chapter XXVII Public Interest in Niagara Power Visitors Niagara Harnessed - A World Message.
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Edward Dean Adams was an American businessman, banker, power broker and numismatist. He served as a president of Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company which built the first hydroelectric power plants in Niagara Falls, New York.
Background
Edward Dean Adams was born on April 9, 1846 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. He was the eldest of the ten children of Adoniram Judson and Harriet Lincoln (Norton) Adams. He was eighth in descent from Henry Adams of Somersetshire, England, who settled in Braintree, Massachussets, about 1636.
Education
Adams graduated from Chauncy Hall, a preparatory school, in 1861, and from Norwich University with the degree of Bachelor of Sciences. in 1864. He then traveled for a year in Europe, spent a year at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Career
In 1867 Adams became a bookkeeper and cashier for T. J. Lee & Hill, stockbrokers of Boston. In 1871 he entered the firm of Richardson, Hill & Company, private bankers, as a partner. In 1878 he went to New York as a partner in the banking house of Winslow, Lanier & Company, where he remained fifteen years. During this time he developed financial relationships of national importance and was recognized by the elder J. Pierpont Morgan as having an extraordinary genius for organization.
Soon after going to New York he became associated with Thomas A. Edison in the latter's project for introducing electric lighting in the streets and buildings of New York City. Through the years that followed, he held many positions with the Edison corporations.
He organized and financed the Northern Pacific Terminal Company of Portland, Oregon, and did the same for the St. Paul & Northern Pacific Railroad, serving as its vice-president from 1883 to 1887. He also planned an intricate reorganization of the New York, Ontario & Western Railroad and of the West Shore & Ontario Terminal Company. In 1890 he rescued the American Cotton Oil Company from impending bankruptcy, reorganized it and placed it on a paying basis, becoming the chairman of its board of directors and president of some of its allied companies.
In 1893 he retired from Winslow, Lanier & Company to become American representative for the Deutsche Bank of Berlin, so continuing until the outbreak of war in 1914. As such, he bought for the bank United States gold bonds to the amount of $200, 000, 000 in 1896, strengthening the American Government's gold reserve and credit at a time of depression.
In 1893 he became chairman of the reorganization committee (whose plan was his own) of the Northern Pacific Railway, and in 1896-1897 he served as chairman of its board of directors.
He organized the International Niagara Commission, with Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) at its head, which first met in London in 1891 to consider the matter of obtaining power from Niagara Falls. Alternating current had never before been used in a great power project like this, but Adams insisted upon it, against the advice of all the others, had his way, and proved its soundness.
From 1890 to 1899 he headed the Cataract Construction Company and allied concerns which built the power plant at Niagara. All the engineering details were carried out under his supervision.
In 1897 he reorganized the Chicago & Northern Pacific and Chicago & Calumet Railroads and combined them with the Chicago Terminal Transfer Railroad Company, of which he was president, 1897-1901.
He was for fourteen years vice-president of the Central & South American Telegraph Company and was director of the Guatemala Railways.
He was a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art--to which he gave paintings and sculpture--from 1894 until his death.
In 1911 he established at Columbia University the Deutsches Haus, the first of the homes for foreign students to be founded there. His published work, Niagara Power, appeared in two volumes in 1927.
He died of pneumonia following an automobile accident.
(Excerpt from History of the Niagara Falls Power Company, ...)
Connections
Adams married Frances Amelia Gutterson of Boston on October 10, 1872, and by her had three children. She and both his sons, Ernest Kempton and Ralph Lanier, predeceased him, and he was survived only by his daughter, Ruth.