Grand Island: What Might Have Been

Despite the bridges that connect Grand Island to the mainland, the island is still, in a sense, isolated. "There isn't the big sprawl. There's hardly any stores over here at all. and the residents actually like it that way." Curtis Nestark is president of the Grand Island Historical Society. 

But Nestark points out that things might have been a lot different if the dreamers had their way.

Mordecai Noah of New York City was one of them. "This was a a Jewish Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin," says local historian Ed Adamczyk.  He describes Noah as an all-purpose creative type. "He was a writer, an actor, officially a sheriff in New York City," he says.

It was 1825. The Erie Canal was about to open, and Mordecai Noah had an idea. "The Jewish population needed a homeland. Well, they've got one today. It's called israel. Back then, Noah got the hot idea to buy Grand Island and welcome the world's Jews to it."

Noah persuaded a land speculator to buy  2600 acres on Grand Island. He declared the island Ararat, after the mountain where the Bible says Noah's ark landed.

"A monument was made," says Adamczyk. "They took it over to the first St. Paul's Episcopal Church in downtown Buffalo to consecrate it".

Mordecai Noah held a parade in Buffalo hoping to drum up interest as well as investors. He wore a costume of crimson silk and ermine, according to a report.

Adamczyk: "Red Jacket was there.  Noah was of the opinion  that the Indians in America were one of the ten lost tribes of Israel."

Imagine: "He's marching down Delaware Avenue, leading a parade, ready to consecrate the new Israel on Grand Island in an Episcopal church in Buffalo."

But Adamczyk says he ran into problems of practicality. "Who is going to run this? the Jewish establishment really objected to the idea of one guy, so far away, coming up with an idea and then working on what he thought was the behalf of every Jew on earth. That really galled them, apparently."

And so, Mordecai Noah never set foot on Grand Island. "There's a motivation here, though," says Adamczyk, "that a man with, back then, limited education, could take the reins as he did. He was a remarkable man." 

Noah's dream of a Jewish homeland on Grand Island died, you might say, for lack of interest. But more than a century later ... there was plenty of interest in what might be developed on the western shore of the island. 

Curtis Nestark point to a map laid out on a table at the Grand Island Historical Society. This represents the proposed United Nations that was going to be built here in 1946."

That's right. Promoters in 1946 made a bid to have the United Nations build its world headquarters on Grand Island, either on Grand Island alone, or on Navy Island and Chippawa in Canada just across the river. A bridge would connect Grand Island to Navy Island, and another bridge would run from Navy Island to mainland Canada.

But that was not to be. The UN voted to locate its headquarters in New York City on 16 acres that was donated by John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Grand Island historian Curtis Nestark says he thinks about those projects from time to time.  "Yeah, I do look back sometimes. But, on the Island it's more or less a small bedroom community, and it's a slow growth community, and the residents like it that way. And I like it that way as well."

If you ever want a peek into what Grand Island might have become, visit the United Nations sometime. Or spend some time at the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Society. There, in a display case, is the monument from 1825 announcing the establishment of a city of refuge to be called Ararat.