[peaceful music] COMMENTER: There's something sacred about edges, the edge of the forest where the forest meets the plain, [peaceful music] and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water.

[peaceful music] JOYCE: Lake Erie is the fourth largest of the Great Lakes, and the home to the city of Erie, Pennsylvania.

Erie's Bayfront in the early 1800s, saw the Bayfront expanding to accommodate the growing shipping and fishing industries.

In 1909, much of this activity was centered around its Public Dock.

[music stops and static hisses] [nostalgic lively music] I was 16 years old, and I was so excited I was going to go for my driver's test.

I passed it.

My father was actually gonna let me drive the car on my own.

Suddenly, I don't know why I did it, I made a left hand turn and there were cinder beds, and railroad tracks, and rotting oil, and water tanks.

COMMENTER: So whatever you saw in downtown Erie, it looked like a ugly, industrial, place you don't want to be.

JOYCE: How could this happen?

I'm gonna do something about this.

COMMENTER: And so people were looking at this and saying, "What could our Bayfront be like?

How do we celebrate the bicentennial?

There was a desire to create some permanent iconic structure.

JOYCE: We really came together as a community.

[applause] [thunder crashes] COMMENTER: Now it's an iconic symbol of Erie.

You see that image everywhere.

COMMENTER: The tower has become a symbol.

The tower has become a landmark.

[peaceful music] [fireworks blasting] [ambient music] [Announcer and crowd] Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.

[fireworks blasting] JOYCE: It's the 4th of July in Erie, Pennsylvania, 2022, as Erie celebrates its proud heritage on her Bayfront at her Bicentennial Tower.

[fireworks blasting] The tower rises next to Erie's marvelous library, and her unique Maritime Museum, where Pennsylvania's flagship Brig Niagara is berthed.

[upbeat music] [intense synthesizer sting] But the library and the museum almost never happened.

[compelling music stops and starts] I joined the port authority in 1987, and at that time, people were looking at the Bayfront and saying, "This is a wonderful resource.

Can it be developed into something higher and better than what it has been?"

Versus those who harken back to the industrial, who say, "Erie's essence is an industrial town.

We have to go back to that.

We have to figure out a way to revitalize industry on the Bayfront."

Of course, the highway wasn't yet completed, and only the first portion got done, I think at the end of 1989, and it took another decade to get from State Street over to East Avenue.

Of course, at that point in time, it was a sort of an industrial relic.

You had a number of facilities which were simply abandoned, like the old grain elevators in the grain elevator site, which is just east of where the library and museum are now.

You had a sand and gravel operation on where the convention center is now.

You had the GAF shingle plant just to the west of that.

You had perhaps the most prominent feature of the Bayfront was the Penelec coal-fired power plant, which brought all its coal in by trucks down Holland Street, and of course, spewed dust all over the place, and you had these huge piles of coal there.

Penelec plant was closed in 1990, and then there's the cleanup operation after that.

COMMENTER: Penelec, who owned the land directly to the east of State Street on the Bayfront, decided that they had to demolish their power generation plant, because it was no longer needed, so Penelec developed a scheme for a waterfront development project where the power plant went down.

They then set aside a parcel, and donated it to the state for the Niagara Museum and the library.

[upbeat music] JOYCE: The donation of the power plant led to further development on the Bayfront.

The site of the power plant became the location of the library, and home of the Brig Niagara and Maritime Museum.

[upbeat music] The site of Perry Shipbuilding Company became the location of the Niagara Pier Condos.

[upbeat music] The site of Erie Builders Concrete became the location of Perry's Landing Yacht Club.

[upbeat music] The site of the Erie Sand and Gravel business became Liberty Park.

[upbeat music] The site of the sand and gravel and shingle factory became the location of the convention center and the Marriott Hotel.

[upbeat music] The West Basin Dock became the Sheraton Hotel and its parking garage.

[upbeat music] The site of the grain elevators became the location of the ferry dock terminal.

[upbeat music] And oh boy, there was a lot of resistance.

There were a lot of great ideas, but a lot of it was an uphill battle.

[compelling music] COMMENTER: There was a lot of resistance to the library, the museum.

There was a lot of negative criticism.

A lot of people thought that it was a dumbest idea in the world, and it's hard to remember with how beloved they've become.

You can't remember how much animosity and resistance in the beginning, and how hard we had to sell these ideas to the community.

And it happens that the library was open the same year that the Bicentennial Tower was open, but it was actually a far more controversial issue, and at that time there was a lot of tension between people who had one view versus the other.

County council and the county executive put out a request for proposals, you know, the library, where would you want it?

No consensus emerged as to where to put the library.

The county executive came back to us and said, "What about the Bayfront," but in conjunction with what's been happening with the Penelec facility that's being renovated, and eventually became the museum, and it wound up there.

That's how we ultimately got to that compromise.

I think it was a four to three vote on county council, and there was a petition drive started up by a city councilperson, Mario Bagnoni, to put that on a ballot, and prevent it from going down, and if it had gone to ballot, it would never have happened.

It would never have happened.

It would never have happened.

Never have happened, never have happened, never have happened.

I remember all sorts of claims about the books will get moldy down there, and things like that, and people won't go down there, and that sort of thing.

Of course, it's been a fabulous success.

You know, some would say, "Well, Erie will never be a tourist center.

We're never gonna attract people here.

Those types of things don't belong here," where others had a different vision of the community moving on beyond where it had been to something different, and that was a debate that no one had proof positive that they were right.

It was really your judgment and your opinion as to what could be.

It was sort of like, reminded me of what Robert F. Kennedy said when he was running for president in 1968, "Some people see things as they are and ask why.

I see things as they could be and ask why not."

And that was the essence of, I think, what was going on at that time in Erie, 1980s.

[intense percussive beat] JOYCE: Erie Pennsylvania's Bayfront, it's the heart of the city, the place where the long mythology of Erie began.

This is the place where the city was born.

It is the focal point of our hopes and dreams.

It was on the shores of Presque Isle Bay that 8,000 years ago, a people we never knew made camp in the shelter of Presque Isle Peninsula.

The Eries people gave the city and the lake its name.

Recognizing the strategic importance of its location, the French and British built forts here, and it was on Erie's Bayfront that Daniel Dobbins built the American fleet that fought a critical battle in the War of 1812.

The United States victory against the British fleet [weapons exploding] secured the future of Erie and the Great Lake states.

And once the claims among four states to the so-called Erie Triangle were settled in Pennsylvania's favor, a new city was surveyed and laid out in 1795, and settlement by European Americans began.

The city's fortunes boomed, fueled by the lake trade, and by the opening of the Erie Extension Canal that ran from the west canal basin along what is now Millionaires Row, linking the port of Erie to the Ohio River and Pittsburgh, which was then the Western frontier of the United States.

The Reeds built three piers down there.

The city was noticing that the Reeds had a monopoly.

In 1833, they ran State Street all the way out to where the Public Dock starts.

And when they did that, then they built the two extensions that go to the left and right, and formed those basins.

The Public Dock didn't show up until 1909.

[lively piano music] JOYCE: It was given to the city, and named the Public Steamboat Landing.

It was formally dedicated on June 24th, 1909.

As Pennsylvania created a series of canals, Erie's Reed family finished the Erie Extension Canal in 1844.

The canal went out of business in 1871, brought on by the emerging railroad industry.

The canal was filled in, and was converted to a new railway, The canal was successful, but short-lived.

[metallic thunk] [rail cars clacking] Soon rail lines, and the docks of the railroads built to serve them, dominated the increasing industrialized Bayfront.

The railroad presence on the Bayfront grew in sync with the shipping, iron ore, coal, and other industries.

[seabirds crying] And one of the biggest industries on the Bayfront was commercial fishing.

COMMENTER: Well, we were once called the freshwater fishing capital of the world.

Lake Erie probably has about 17 or 18% of the water in the Great Lakes, but more like 75 or 80% of the fish.

We have 10% of the water, and 90% of the fish.

There was ciscoe here, that was the second most popular game fish.

There were whitefish, blue pike, which have disappeared.

At peak, you know, between 1906, 7, 8, 9, there was more than 100 really actually legitimate registered fish tugs in the harbor.

There was probably always 40 or 50 renegades.

People would come down here from Lake Huron, because this is where the fish were.

Also at peak, there were 16 processors in this town.

JOYCE: At the height of commercial fishing, the tonnage of fish caught just out of Erie was in the 40 to 50 million pound range.

In 1912, 22 million pounds of just blue pike was caught.

[upbeat music] COMMENTER: They were gluttons, they were uncontrolled, and they were using technology that kept getting better and better and better.

The catch just eroded.

They would go out and catch, you know, a ton of fish.

Next year, it' be half a ton, and a quarter of a ton, and one by one, species disappeared.

JOYCE: By 1963, there were no commercial harvest of blue pike, and many declared blue pike extinct.

Fishing, shipping, and other industries operated on the Bayfront until the early 1960s, but de-industrialization, and the loss of jobs, and the flight of the population to the suburbs hit Erie hard.

And in the 1980s, the Bayfront, its docks quiet, its factories abandoned, was almost forgotten.

Erie was in the midst of a civic identity crisis.

Even Erie citizens referred to Erie as the mistake on the lake.

COMMENTER: And I remember the Bayfront back then when it was literally a gravel dirt road with a lot of industry, big industry.

Perry ship building was there.

There was oil and gas tanks up on the hill.

Industries, hammer mill, discharged right into the lake or bay.

JOYCE: There were cinder beds and railroad tracks.

COMMENTER: No public access.

JOYCE: Rotting oil tanks.

COMMENTER: Fenced off.

COMMENTER: Dead fish.

COMMENTER: Scary as hell.

COMMENTER: Ugly.

JOYCE: How could this look so bad?

[cars whooshing] And then the Bayfront Highway along the waterfront was built.

This was key to the development of the Bayfront as we know it today.

One of the things that had been on the planning books for years was a Port Access Road, a road to extend Route 79 down across the Bayfront, and eventually back up to Route 90 on the other side.

It was called the Port Access Road.

The concept of the Port Access Road finally evolved into a Bayfront Access Road.

At that point, the port authority, who controlled most of the land on the waterfront, began to think more that they could also become a facilitator of Bayfront development.

In 1980, the three piers that became Perry's Landing, one was a ship building, one was the sand and gravel business, one was oil, you know, oil and gas imported from United Refinery, so it was not a paved road.

You could drive along the railroad tracks.

There were railroad tracks, there was piles of coal.

It was fenced off, ugly.

My firm had a thirst to try to get involved in waterfront projects.

We were able to acquire some land at Perry's Landing, and began to develop plans for a waterfront development which involved housing, and the yacht club, and related stuff.

[upbeat music] At that point, the port authority began to think that they could also become a facilitator of Bayfront development.

Perry's Landing began to develop, and we designed condos, and began to sell condos.

We developed another yacht club, a little tower there, and so there was some momentum, and people, the city began to see that the Bayfront was a major amenity.

[crowd cheering] Eventually, a consensus developed in the port authority that we should move forward, and that was to acquire property where we had the capability to do that, and also clean it up, tear things down like the grain elevator site, the old grain elevators, which we did tear down, and make it available for some form of development.

The conception of the Bayfront being an industrial waterfront changed when a proposal was made to rebuild the US Brig Niagara, and dock the ship at a planned museum on the Bayfront.

[upbeat music] [compelling music] As the city approached the 200th anniversary of its founding, civic leaders looked to Erie's past for guidance from the 1895 centennial celebrations.

Erie's citizens celebrated its 100th anniversary with parades, archways, and other commemorative structures, and the old public library on South Park Row was built and dedicated to future Erie citizens.

[marching band playing] I knew that the bicentennial of the founding of the city of Erie was coming up in 1995, and I knew we had to do something significant, and I contacted Dr. Garvey, who was then president of Mercer, and asked him if he would chair a commission that I would form, and that their project was to plan an appropriate celebration for the city of Erie.

And of course, the legacy gift of it all is what we now know as the Bicentennial Tower.

Like the centennial, the bicentennial celebration assembled a massive parade on West 12th Street.

Erie's own Tom Ridge, who was governor at the time, was the grand marshal.

The centennial celebration gave us the Erie Library.

The bicentennial celebration hoped to produce a more dynamic structure.

[compelling music] COMMENTER: How do we celebrate the bicentennial?

There was a desire to create some permanent iconic structure, feature, something that people could look at, and remind them that we've been here for 200 years.

[upbeat music] Dobbins Landing is an iconic place, you know?

It used to be called the Public Dock, so it was something that was at the center of Erie.

It was something that was focused on the Bayfront.

We hired Weber Murphy Fox.

Eventually we came up with a design, and the port authority financed it, was about $2 million project.

Some naysayers, though, saying, "Well, what are you doing down there?

Why are you spending money on that?

We're not gonna be a tourist city."

So now it's an iconic symbol of Erie.

You see that image everywhere.

JOYCE: And so the search for a design for a structure began.

[compelling music] So we did a very detailed study on all the use patterns, and designed three schemes, three different ways.

One of them was a tower, the other was a large water cannon, and the other was a stage, because we thought that the Public Dock could be used for staging events.

Joyce Savocchio asked Bill Garvey if he would be chairman of the bicentennial commission.

Bill happened to also sit on the port authority, so bill arranged a selection of a city's gift to itself, which was to take the tower option, and to use that as the city's bicentennial gift to itself.

[compelling music] The Public Dock was the most homely, and most beloved piece of real estate in Erie, and one of the very few places in Erie where people could get to the Bayfront.

[peaceful music] The reason it was so beloved is if you had a visitor come to Erie, within the first 24 hours that they were here, you would take the visitor, put 'em in your car, you'd drive them down onto the Public Dock, you'd stand at the end, and you'd look out at the bay and the peninsula, you'd look back at the city.

And that was part of the kind of orientation ritual of Erie saying, "Hey, look at us.

This is a great city.

We are in this Bayfront."

Preexisting, there was a steel structure, a T-shaped steel structure on the Public Dock.

I decided that we needed to keep that, let the towers seem to grow out of that existing structure.

I designed the tower to emphasize its verticality, so one of the ways to do that was to create a steel structure, and then you see through the structure into the white shaft, and it makes it seem taller and slenderer than it actually is.

Our concept always was that the tower would be a terminus of the city's main axis, which is State Street.

So you can drive from 41st and State all the way down through the city, and end up in the Public Dock, and the tower was then gonna put a punctuation spot, a focal point.

We were also aware that the tower would be a focal point for boaters entering Presque Isle Bay through the channel.

It would be an identifier, "Oh, this is where, this is the center of the city, this is my target."

And that one of the things that the traditional use of the Public Dock was to allow Erie and its visitors to come to the bay, look out across the bay, and look back at the city.

We saw the tower as a device to leverage that experience, so instead of doing it at the surface level, you could do that same thing.

You could look out at a panoramic view of the bay, and over the peninsula to the lake, and look back at the city from 180 feet in the air.

[intense percussion] We were awarded the Erie Water Authority Project, maybe a year prior to the tower being awarded.

We learned the difficulty with the nonstructural fill on the Bayfront, and anything you build required caissons three foot into the shale rock for proper bearing.

[upbeat music] The structure of the Public Dock is a bunch of railroad ties sitting on the bottom of the bay, filled with rocks, and then put some paving over the top of it.

If the whole Public Dock blew away under an enormous storm, the tower would still sit there, because it doesn't sit on the dock.

The tower sits on a bunch of caissons.

COMMENTER: Thank goodness shale rock's only like, 25 foot below grade elevation, so it's not very deep.

[upbeat music] [intense percussion] COMMENTER: Yeah, it was constrained in a couple ways.

There was a press timeline, because it wanted to be done by the bicentennial.

COMMENTER: The timeframe of the project really was not a desirable time to bid a project of that consequence.

COMMENTER: And the budget was very constrained.

It was 3 million bucks.

COMMENTER: In addition, there was liquidated damages, so if you were over by a day, you were fined by like, $1,000 a day.

We started working February, and it's a good time to start, because the winter is certainly not over, but you're working out of your winter, and you're gonna be in the mud for a month or so, but kind of used to that.

[upbeat music] So we were able to get the concrete in the ground early part of the year, more desirable working out of the winter.

[upbeat music] [intense percussion] There was a little bit of lay down area towards the south end of the pier, but that did us no good as far as structural.

You'd had to get right next to the tower.

Usually a structural frame like that is erected in pieces.

[driving rock music] Erie Steel elected to build it in 20 foot sections, the entire tower in 20 foot section, including the bracing.

COMMENTER: So the trucks would come in, they'd be immediately unloaded, turn around, and another truck behind.

[driving rock music] We really did start as soon as we could have, mainly because of weather.

We thought making the steel frame in sections would make up for that time.

COMMENTER: And the steel frame went up twice as fast as typical, so it worked out pretty darn good.

[driving rock music] The fabrication needed to be sequenced in accordance with the erection from the bottom up, so you couldn't have a section of tower two thirds the way up delivered when you're only on the first 20 foot or so.

So you needed to make sure that it was fabricated, sent to the painter, and delivered to the job site in a timely fashion per sequence.

[driving rock music] [intense percussion] [upbeat music] The bricks were a huge success.

The community needed to get involved.

I think it was Dr. Garvey that came up with the idea about buying a brick and dedicating it to whoever you wanted for a nominal fee.

And I think the bricks sold out inside the tower in a matter of a few days, and then they went outside, and they started selling bricks around the pier itself.

[intense percussion] [upbeat music] With a higher structure, five story and higher, there's usually a topping off ceremony party, and it's the highest steel member of the structure that gets erected.

[upbeat music] In the case of the tower, it was the cupola.

[upbeat music] You know, sometimes things don't fit, then you have to bring it back down and revise it, but it fit, worked out really well.

I don't think we had much of a party.

We still weren't done.

[intense percussion] [upbeat music] [intense percussion] [elevator dings] That toughest day was around the elevator.

[elevator dings] There was a problem with the delivery of the elevator, and without an elevator, you can't open a structure.

You can't get occupancy.

[elevator dings] We finally got the delivery, but it was late, and then the elevator union workers, they only work so many hours a day, so many days a week, and it doesn't matter if you're behind or not, so we were underneath the gun to get the elevator installed, inspected by the state, not the city, and get occupancy permit before that critical completion date, where damages start to take effect.

And without an occupancy permit, you're not substantially done.

COMMENTER: The time capsule was installed, I believe two weeks after the dedication in October '96.

[compelling music] And so when this capsule rises out of the ground in 2095, those people will know we were thinking of them, and as they become aware it's gonna come up, their excitement will grow, and in that moment, we're all gonna be reborn as it comes back out of the ground.

[compelling music] COMMENTER: We completed the project within time, but it was pretty darn close.

It was within a week.

[intense percussion] Bid November 1995, shop drawing process December of 1995, steel fabrication from December '95 through March of '96, steel erection from April of '96 through the end of summer of '96.

The actual dedication and ribbon cutting ceremony was October 1996.

The time capsule was installed, I believe, two weeks after the dedication, November of '96, completion, November of '96.

[intense percussion] [applause] A new Erie is being born, one that prides itself on its rich history, traditions, and beginnings, and one which is building today for an exciting tomorrow.

Nowhere is this more evident that on the waterfront and its environments where our city began 200 years ago.

This tower, as it rises from water's edge, is an expression of the new Erie that has found its beginnings and rebirth on our Bayfront.

To look around the panoramic vista the tower provides is to look at Erie today, but more importantly, to be able to see for years ahead, what Erie is becoming.

Today, we come together to dedicate a new landmark, a new physical expression of a new Erie.

[indistinct chatter] [applause] [fireworks blasting] [upbeat music] [intense synthesizer sting] [fireworks blasting] COMMENTER: The tower is the symbol of Erie, because Erie has the Bayfront, and I would say that the Perry Monument was a very strong symbol of Erie prior to the tower, and it's obvious to me that that symbol should be tied to the Bayfront.

And it's not a building, it's not a business.

It's a structure that the public can honor and look at whenever they want.

Erie has a lot to offer.

The most it has to offer, the number one ingredient is the Bayfront, not the lakefront, but the Bayfront.

How many cities in the Great Lakes have a bay?

So I think it's important that a symbol of Erie is on the Bayfront, and the tower is that symbol.

In 1895, an individual stood where I'm standing today, and said that when that far off day in 1995 comes, we want the citizens of Erie to know that we were thinking of them.

So it was natural that when Tom Dolan chaired the committee, and that committee looked for a proper fitting memorial, they came ultimately to the Bayfront, and envisioned a tower.

So when the mayor cuts the ribbon of this tower today, let's think of it as an invitation, an invitation to fellow Pennsylvanians and visitors from around the world to come and visit Erie, enjoy our people, enjoy our neighborhoods, enjoy our sites, enjoy our history, enjoy the natural treasures that we've been blessed with, because from Erie, those of us who live here, whether you're on a tower or not, we know that the view from Erie, Pennsylvania is nothing short of spectacular.

COMMENTER: So it's fitting that in looking to the future, we find the past.

It is fitting that the Bicentennial Tower will take its place in Erie history as a landmark of this community.

The identity and spirit of a community and its people, as well as its heritage and its future finds its expression most often in physical landmarks.

Our community has such landmarks that attest to who and what we have been, are, and will be as a city.

I think the most important thing about the tower, and it's become iconic, but I think the most important thing about the tower is I think it speaks to the past, I think it speaks to the present, and I think it speaks to the future.

If you look at the actual structure of it, I think it brings to mind maybe a couple of things.

It looks in its structure, almost like a lighthouse type of structure.

And on the other hand, if you're really into history, it looks almost like part of fortification, or part of a fort, and so what I think it does, if you look back to our past, is Erie's history leading up to its founding, we were a place where there existed three forts at one time.

So it holds a lot of past history in it, and the fact that we were celebrating the bicentennial of the city of Erie speaks to its 200 years as a city, although geographically, it existed even before then.

But it also speaks, I think, to our present, because it's become so iconic, it's become a destination, and not only for the people of this region, but for the people from all over the country.

COMMENTER: There's something sacred about edges, the edge of the forest where the forest meets the plain, and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water, and where the land meets the water.

JOYCE: And so what almost did not happen, did happen, and it's something we should all be very proud of.

[upbeat music]