Life was anything but easy growing up on Cutler Street during the early 1940s. At the time, the bustling street in Schenectady’s Mont Pleasant neighborhood was crowded with low-income and immigrant families. Poverty was common, and there was seldom time to do anything but work.
People have been riding the Ferris wheel over and over since 1893, when George Ferris — who studied engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy — showed off the first round giant at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Posted on August 10, 2008.
"Descriptions, pictures and dimensions all fail of their purpose. The only way in which one may comprehend the vastness, the almost weird wonderfulness of this construction, is to see it. Overshadowing everything else in that part of the World’s Fair region, it grows and grows as one approaches nearer. Finally, it appalls and overwhelms," said Walter Wellman, journalist for Schenectady’s Daily Union newspaper, writing about the Ferris wheel at the Columbian Exposition, seen above, in a story published May 12, 1893
Seen from another gondola just above them, Tucker Frasier, left, and Matt Kaslauskas of Broadalbin ride the Giant Ferris wheel at the Saratoga County Fair last month.
