Technology & Engineering

Love Canal originated in 1894 as part of William T. Love's dream
to build a model city and power canal. The neighborhood emerged in the 1970s as an environmental nightmare and harbinger of the worldwide hazardous waste crisis. Photographs in Love Canal tell the story of the community's early development and the subsequent use of the canal by Hooker Electrochemical Company to discard industrial chemical waste from 1942 to 1953. In the late 1970s, the seemingly dormant dump began to leak, and residents found themselves in a slowly unfolding nightmare, learning that the waste dumped in the canal decades before was not simply garbage but actually a toxic brew of dangerous chemicals that were hazardous to life, health, and property.

Few things in our world today can be described as truly "unique," and yet, this word is aptly attributed to the USS Constellation. The last all-sail warship constructed by the United States Navy, the Constellation is the last surviving vessel afloat that actively served in the Union or Confederate Navies during the Civil War. While hundreds of battlefields commemorate the valor of the legions of soldiers who served in our nation's most divisive conflict, this ship is the last buoyant memorial to those who served their country and their cause upon the precarious seas. From her 1854 mystery-shrouded construction, through her numerous roles and assignments, to her several "restorations" over the last 40 years, this majestic vessel has a fascinating story to tell. USS Constellation: An Illustrated History, the first comprehensive account of the Constellation's journey through the years, tells this story and showcases over 200 images, including photographs, engravings, paintings, and sketches gathered from museums, archives, and private collections. These visual records, and the informative captions that accompany them, testify to the engaging tale of this seminal piece of American history, dispel the myths of her past, and set straight her record of accomplishment and endurance.

In the 1970s, a politically savvy and hardworking neighborhood organization, the Seward West Project Area Committee (PAC), outmaneuvered a public agency's renewal plan to demolish approximately 70 percent of a historic neighborhood in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Demolition would have included all the houses on Milwaukee Avenue, a half-hidden, very narrow two-block-long street flanked by small brick houses. Built in the 1880s, many of these houses were the very first homes in Minneapolis. Milwaukee Avenue offers a unique presentation of determined citizens saving their neighborhood in a decade that changed history.