Dennis Sun Rhodes was almost 1,000 miles away earlier this month, when the Niagara Falls City Council voted 3-1 against giving formal landmark status to the Turtle, a building Sun Rhodes – an internationally celebrated architect – envisioned and designed, a short walk from the upper rapids and the falls.
Though Sun Rhodes hopes to visit soon, it would have been almost impossible for him to be at the meeting. He lives in St. Paul, Minn., where he’s dealing with severe effects from diabetes.
Still, he joins two old friends – Rick Hill, longtime artist, writer and historian from the Tuscarora Nation, and 94-year-old Onondaga faithkeeper Oren Lyons – in at least sharing this hope:
The Turtle is really both a dream and a story, and to fully understand means remembering the way it came to be.
In that sense, Sun Rhodes said, “Its time is forever.”
The council vote rejected a preservation commission recommendation to give the building landmark status. James Perry, council chair, voted against the designation, a move he said was philosophical.
The Turtle has been owned for years by a private firm, Niagara Falls Redevelopment, which opposed the action. Perry said he doesn’t believe in telling private owners how they must develop their property.
Silo City is located within what once was the Seneca territory known as Buffalo Creek, refuge and sanctuary for the Haudenosaunee and many Indigenous people following the…
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