John Joseph Albright (1 January 1848 Buchanan, Virginia – 20 August 1931 Buffalo, New York) was a businessman and philanthropist, and one of Buffalo's leading socialites at the turn of the 20th century.
Early life Albright was born on January 18, 1848, in Buchanan, Virginia, to Joseph Jacob Albright and Elizabeth S. Albright, both from Pennsylvania. The family was descended from Andrew Albright, a gunsmith who supplied arms to the troops of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, who had come to America in 1750. Albright's father, Joseph, was an iron manufacturer and eventually, president of the First National Bank, coal agent for Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad.
His family lived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, when he was a child and he attended public schools in Scranton, then Williston Academy in Massachusetts, ultimately graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, with a degree in mining engineering in 1868.
Career
Following his graduation from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Albright returned to Scranton. At that time, coal was in high demand in the Western United States, and Albright got involved in its sale. By 1871, Albright was working out of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, selling coal wholesale, along with his business partner, Andrew Langdon (1835–1919). Their firm was called Langdon, Albright and Company. By 1873, Albright had married Langdon's sister, Harriet, and they all moved to Washington, DC, where Albright and Langdon started to work for the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company.
While in Washington, Albright started an asphalt business with his brother-in-law, Amzi L. Barber (who had married his wife's sister, Julia Louise Langdon). Together, Barber and Albright participated in the paving of Washington, DC, Scranton, and Buffalo. While Albright turned to other ventures, Barber continued with the asphalt business and secured a 42-year monopoly concession from the British government for the Pitch Lake in Trinidad, the largest natural deposit of asphalt in the world. Barber used the asphalt from Trinidad for paving city streets, and by 1900, Barber had laid over 12 million square yards of Trinidad asphalt pavement in 70 American cities at a cost of $35 million.
In 1883, the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company tightened its shipping routes and started shipping coal directly by rail through Buffalo, New York, to ship their coal to the west. Albright moved his family to Buffalo to oversee the operations. While there, he entered into partnership with Thomas Guilford Smith, another Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate and Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company executive. Their firm, Albright & Smith, handled all of Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company's coal sales in Canada and Western New York, as well as all the railroad's coal going westward from Buffalo. Albright devised a plan to fill up the empty trains with grain on the haul back to the East. Purportedly, within a year, he had earned $100,000 ().
By 1888, Albright had done so well that he decided to retire and took his family on a 14-month tour of Europe and Egypt when he was only 40 years old. Albright, however, tired of retirement and started working again upon his return. By 1889, Albright's business partner, Smith, had become a sales agent for Carnegie, Phipps & Company Limited, which later merged with the Carnegie Steel Company, of which Smith was its Buffalo representative.
Ontario Power Company 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 electricity (alternating current) as being the preferred transmission method, and after going through many proposals, they awarded the generating contract to Westinghouse Electric in 1893, with further transmission lines and transformer contracts awarded to General Electric.Robert L. Bradley, Jr., Edison to Enron: Energy Markets and Political Strategies, John Wiley & Sons - 2011, page 40Quentin R. Skrabec, The 100 Most Significant Events in American Business: An Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO - 2012, page 113 Work began in 1893 and in November 1896, power generated from Niagara Falls at the Edward Dean Adams Power Plant was being sent to Buffaloand the plants of the Pittsburgh Reduction Company, which needed large quantities of cheap electricity for smelting aluminum.Mark Essig, Edison and the Electric Chair: A Story of Light and Death, Bloomsbury Publishing USA - 2009, page 274
A similar set of events was happening on the Canadian side of the falls. In June 1887, recognizing an opportunity, the Ontario Power Company of Niagara Falls was incorporated in Canada "to supply manufacturers, corporations, and persons with water, hydraulic, electric, or other power." While its operations were in Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, its executive office was in Buffalo with these officers: Albright, president; Francis V. Greene, vice president; and Robert C. Board, secretary and treasurer.
In 1903, the company obtained an agreement with the commissioners of the Queen Victoria Niagara Falls Park that allowed the company to develop at least 180,000 horsepower of electricity. The company built its hydroelectric generating plant, which opened in 1905, at the base of the Horseshoe Falls just above river level. The plant had 15 generators, which produced 203,000 horsepower of electric power. In 1904, Albright hired Buffalo architect E. B. Green to design the Ontario Power Company buildings, Murray Street at Buchanan Avenue, including the Entrance Pavilion, Spillway Building, Office and Transformer Station, Gate House, Screen House, and Ontario Power Company Generating Stationat river level.
The hydroelectric generating plant worked by allowing water to enter the generating station from an inlet located one mile upstream of Niagara Falls, near Dufferin Islands, and was then brought to the plant through buried conduit pipes and steel penstocks tunneled through the rock. The conduits, two steel and one wooden (bound with iron hoops and encased in concrete), ran underground 6,180 ft (1,884 m) to the top of the generating station. There, each conduit connected with six penstocks, six feet in diameter. At the point where the conduits and the penstocks join, a section turned upwards into a spillway, called a surge tank, which served to reduce fluctuations in heat and pressure during both the increase and decrease of loads. The open spillways sent any excess water to the Niagara River if the load suddenly reduced, which prevented any unwanted rise in pressure.
From the distributing station, the transmission lines carried power at 60,000 volts each with a capacity of 40,000 kWs, running over a right of way that was 300 ft wide and 32,000 ft long. This ran north to an area down the Niagara River known as Devil's Hole, where they then crossed the river into New York across a 1,300-ft-long span. In addition to the high-tension feeders, tabout 30 miles of lines served Canadian customers at generator voltage.
The power that was transmitted to New York 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 continued to operate until 1999, when the Ontario Power Generation (formerly Ontario Hydro) decommissioned the Ontario Power Company Generating Station from service to accommodate the construction of Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort, built on the former transformer building location. As of 2015, the 1905 remaining generating station is owned by the Niagara Parks Commission, and sits abandoned.
Niagara, Lockport, and Ontario Power Company In 1905, a syndicate headed by Albright and Henry Herman Westinghouse (brother of George Westinghouse) acquired control Niagara, Lockport and Ontario Power Company from Joseph G. Robin and his associates. The purchasing syndicate included Albright, Westinghouse, New York Central, Vanderbilt interests, and Horace E. Andrews, of Cleveland (president of the New York State Railways, the Mohawk Valley Company, the Rochester Railway & Light Company, director of the New York Central Railway, the Michigan Central Railway, West Shore Railway, Schenectady Railway Company, Havana Railway, and Light & Power Company), among others.
The acquired company's officers were Francis V. Greene, president (also vice president of Ontario Power Company); F. B. H. Paine, vice president and chief engineer (formerly export manager of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company); Robert C. Board, secretary (also secretary and treasurer of Ontario Power Company); and Clifford Hubbell, treasurer. Westinghouse replaced Cassius Milton Wicker as a director of the company and the offices of the company moved to the Fidelity Trust Building in Buffalo. Stephen M. Clement, (president of Marine Bank), succeeded Joseph G. Robin on the board of syndicate managers for the underwriting of the company's securities.
By 1908, the company had around 400 miles of transmission lines running from Devil's Hole through Lockport and Rochester to Syracuse, a total distance of 167 miles from the distributing station. It had branch lines running to West Seneca, Batavia, Caledonia, Avon, Auburn, and Baldwinsville near Syracuse. The right-of-way for the lines was owned by the company and was 300 ft in width from the Niagara River to Lockport, 200 ft from Lockport to Rochester, and 75 ft the remainder of the way to Syracuse. The company also leased a right-of-way on the West Shore Railroad from near Akron to Syracuse. In January 1918, Niagara, Lockport and Ontario Power Company acquired the Salmon River Power Company, which operated its own hydroelectric power plan in Salmon River (New York) on the shore of Lake Ontario.
Later in 1943, the Niagara, Lockport and Ontario Power Company reorganized as the Niagara Hudson Company, Inc., and became a subsidiary of Niagara Hudson Power Corporation, which was a conglomerate of 59 separate power companies in Western New York formed in 1929, and in 1932, was the "nation's largest electric utility company". In 1950, Niagara Hudson Power Corporation reorganized as the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation and in January 2002, Niagara Mohawk was acquired by, and became a subsidiary of, National Grid plc.
Lackawanna Steel Company
In 1889, Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company, at the time the largest steel company in the world, decided to move its facilities out of Scranton, Pennsylvania, because of increases in union labor cost and lack of railroad access to the company's newly emerging markets in the West. They were drawn to Western New York by the area's easy access to the Great Lakes and the numerous rail lines in the area.
Lackawanna Company executives reached out to Buffalo attorney John G. Milburn, who brought in Albright, who had been discussing organizing a steel plant in Buffalo with William A. Rogers (vice president of Rogers, Brown & Company, the largest pig iron dealer in the United States). He asked that Rogers be brought into negotiations, as well as Brig. Gen. Edmund B. Hayes (a civil engineer and businessman with the Union Bridge Company).