New York State History

On his way to visit Niagara Falls in 1825, Lafayette passed Fredonia in western New York, where he witnessed another marvel of nature.

Here, at an inn called the Abel House, he saw the first commercial use of natural gas in the United States. In a nearby field some time earlier a group of boys playing with blazing sticks noticed that when a lighted ember fell at a certain spot a flame would shoot up. Investigation showed that a small volume of natural gas issued from the ground. A hole was dug, the gas well was capped with a tin roof, and the natural gas was piped to the inn, where gas jets were installed as lighting fixtures. The General was impressed but remarked that the place was evidently too close to Hades.

Niagara Mohawk's gas system, now well supplied by pipelines with natural gas, had its beginning in local companies established to supply consumers with manufactured gas. The first was the Albany Gas Light Company, incorporated in 1841. It ran service pipes into more than 100 buildings, including the Capitol and the Delavan House—a famous hotel of that period—and several private buildings. In 1846 the company converted ninety oil street lamps for gas operation. Other early gas companies were organized in eastern New York in the next ten years in Troy, Schenectady, Cohoes, Hudson, Saratoga, Glens Falls, and Johnstown. In central New York between 1848 and 1859, gas manufacturing plants were built in Utica, Syracuse, and Rome. The next decade saw the beginning of service in Oswego, Watertown, Ogdensburg, Little Falls, Ilion, Malone, and a dozen other places in central and northern New York.

Suddenly in 1879 gas was confronted with a new competitor-Edison's incandescent lamp. Research men and inventors were hurriedly called in to save gas illumination. They came up with the mantle burner— a vast improvement over the flickering fishtail flame from the open-tip burner used since the earliest days of gas manufacture. But this progressive development could not save the gas companies from steadily declining busi­ness in the lighting field of the home and streets. The electric light had come to stay.

With the electric lamp pushing aside the gas mantle, the gas com­panies found their salvation from an unexpected source. The gas range made its appearance. Every home owner was a prospect. Following the gas range came other domestic conveniences, gas water heaters and in later years house-heating furnaces, refrigeration, and clothes driers. The early gas appliances were so successful that gas companies paid less and less attention to the lighting business, realizing that vast sales possibilities existed in new uses of their gas service.

The increased demand for gas as a domestic fuel was so great that the local companies built main extensions to outlying parts of cities. These extensions, together with accompanying increases in plant capacity, called for heavy capital outlays which gas companies with limited financial resources had difficulty in making. Many of them, therefore, merged with local or regional electric lighting companies to form enlarged and finan­cially stronger corporations. The result was increased efficiency and econ­omy in serving all customers.