Back then, you would have had to have a DC power station about every three blocks. It just doesn’t “travel well.”
Agreed. AC was the best tech of the times in which Tesla lived.
It still does a good job even now, but DC is coming of age with the advent of high voltage power semiconductors.
I don’t think we have to worry that AC is going away at the wall for a long time to come, but it will slowly make its way down to street level in the coming decades as semiconductors just keep getting cheaper and better.