Exterior of Toronto Power Generating Station

The Toronto Power Generating Station is a former

generating station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many pow ...

located along the

Niagara River The Niagara River () is a river that flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. It forms part of the border between the province of Ontario in Canada (on the west) and the state of New York (state), New York in the United States (on the east) ...

Niagara Falls, Ontario Niagara Falls is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is on the western bank of the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario, with a population of 88,071 at the 2016 census. It is part of the St. Catharines - Niagara Census M ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

, slightly upstream from the newer

Rankine power station The Rankine Generating Station is a former hydro-electric generating station along the Canadian side of the Niagara River in Niagara Falls, Ontario, slightly downstream from the older Toronto Power Generating Station. It was built in for the Ca ...

. Completed in 1906 in the Beaux-Arts-style, the station was designed by architect

E. J. Lennox Edward James Lennox (September 12, 1854 – April 15, 1933) was a Toronto-based architect who designed several of the city's most notable landmarks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Old City Hall and Casa Loma. He ...

and was built by the Electrical Development Company of Ontario (owned by William Mackenzie,

Frederic Thomas Nicholls Frederic Thomas Nicholls (November 22, 1856 – October 25, 1921) was a Canadian businessman, electrical engineer and politician. He was a Conservative senator representing the senatorial division of Toronto, Ontario from 1917 to 1921. In 1892 ...

, and

Henry Mill Pellatt Major-General Sir Henry Mill Pellatt, CVO (January 6, 1859 – March 8, 1939) was a Canadian financier and soldier. He is notable for his role in bringing hydro-electricity to Toronto for the first time, and also for his large château in Toront ...

) under supervision of Hugh L. Cooper to supply

hydro-electric power Hydroelectricity, or hydroelectric power, is Electricity generation, electricity generated from hydropower (water power). Hydropower supplies one sixth of the world's electricity, almost 4500 TWh in 2020, which is more than all other Renewabl ...

to nearby

Toronto, Ontario Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

. The plant is built on top of a deep wheel pit, with

turbines A turbine ( or ) (from the Greek , ''tyrbē'', or Latin ''turbo'', meaning vortex) is a rotary mechanical device that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful Work (physics), work. The work produced by a turbine can be used ...

at the bottom of the pit, turning generators at the top by means of long vertical shafts. The water from the turbines runs out through a brick-lined

tailrace A water wheel is a machine for converting the energy of flowing or falling water into useful forms of power, often in a watermill. A water wheel consists of a wheel (usually constructed from wood or metal), with a number of blades or buckets ...

which eventually comes out at the base of the falls. In its prime, it had a generating capacity of . The plant ceased operations on February 15, 1974 as

Ontario Hydro Ontario Hydro, established in 1906 as the Hydro-Electric Power Commission of Ontario, was a publicly owned electricity utility in the Province of Ontario. It was formed to build transmission lines to supply municipal utilities with electricity ge ...

looked to make better use of the available water downriver at the

Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Stations Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Generating Stations are two hydroelectric generating stations in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Sir Adam Beck Generating Station I, Sir Adam Beck Generating Station II and the Sir Adam Beck Pump Generating Station are ...

Queenston Queenston is a compact rural community and unincorporated place north of Niagara Falls in the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada. It is bordered by Highway 405 to the south and the Niagara River to the east; its location at the eponymo ...

. In addition, the plant produced "25 Cycle" electricity, now largely unused. The vacant plant was designated a

National Historic Site of Canada National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of t ...

in 1983, due to its importance in the development of business, industry and technology in Ontario, its status as the first wholly Canadian-owned hydro-electric facility at Niagara Falls, and the unusual application of Beaux-Arts design to an industrial plant. Ownership of the Toronto Power Generating Station was transferred to the

Niagara Parks Commission The Niagara Parks Commission, commonly shortened to Niagara Parks, is an agency of the Government of Ontario which maintains the Ontario shoreline of the Niagara River. History The Commission was founded in 1885 and charged with preserving and ...

in 2007. Structural assessments were subsequently undertaken in order to consider future

adaptive reuse Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an existing building for a purpose other than which it was originally built or designed for. It is also known as recycling and conversion. Adaptive reuse is an effective strategy for optimizing the o ...

options for the facility. In its current empty state, the plant has been the subject of

urban exploration Urban exploration (often shortened as UE, urbex and sometimes known as roof and tunnel hacking) is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. Photography and historical inter ...

activities.

References

External links

{{NHSC National Historic Sites in Ontario Buildings and structures in Niagara Falls, Ontario Energy infrastructure completed in 1913 Beaux-Arts architecture in Canada E. J. Lennox buildings 1913 establishments in Ontario Hydroelectric power stations in Ontario