Neighbor-to-Neighbor News
Serving communities with local news in the Southtowns of Erie County New York, Wyoming County New York and northern Cattaraugus Counties. www.easturorany.com. On line since 1999, in print for more than `150 years.
Neighbor-to-Neighbor News
East Aurora Hosts Early Electrified Tree Lighting
By Historian Robert Lowell Goller On Christmas Eve 1914, East Aurora hosted what was likely among the first electrified Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in the world. Just a decade after the first recorded use of outdoor electric Christmas lights (on a tree in San Diego in 1904), and just two years after the first public tree lighting ceremony with electric lights (in New York City’s Madison Square Park in 1912), East Aurora flipped the switch on 250 electric lamps adorning a 35-year-old evergreen tree on the Roycroft Campus. Although the exact location of the pine tree is unknown, an account...