Oops — I Missed Seneca Falls, New York!!

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Bay City, Michigan

August 21, 2024

Seneca Falls is a town in Seneca County, New York, United States. The population was 9,027 at the 2020 census.

The Town of Seneca Falls contains the former village also called Seneca Falls. The town is east of Geneva, New York, in the northern part of the Finger Lakes District.

Seneca Falls is a historic location along a branch of the Erie Canal and is often referred to as the 'birthplace of women's rights', where the 1848 women's rights convention was held. Many also believe it to have been the inspiration for the fictional town of "Bedford Falls", portrayed in filmmaker Frank Capra's classic 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life.

https://therealbedfordfalls.com/

Bedford Falls is the fictional town in which Philip Van Doren Stern's 1943 short booklet The Greatest Gift, and RKO Pictures 1946 film adaptation It's a Wonderful Life, are set.

In 1945, Frank Capra visited Seneca Falls, New York to look for inspiration for the town of Bedford Falls. The real town and the fictional town are very similar as they are both mill towns, they both had a grassy median down the main street (Seneca Falls does not anymore), both communities boast Victorian architecture and a large Italian population, and they both have very similar toll bridges. The locations are both close to Buffalo, Elmira, and Rochester, New York.

In Seneca Falls, there was a local businessman named Norman J. Gould, who owned Gould Pumps, and was one of the richest men in town. Gould also had great control over politics and economics of the area, much as Henry F. Potter did in the film.

The name Bedford Falls derives from both Seneca Falls and a hamlet in Westchester County, New York, called Bedford Hills.