Big Ditch Brewery Co. owner Matt Kahn on his Lockport restaurant.
Elizabeth Licata
editorial writer
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There’s no escaping the Erie Canal in Lockport. It flows through the entirety of this small city. Here the 200th anniversary of the canal is a very big deal, just like the 150th (sesquicentennial) and even the 175th (quartoseptennial) were.
Though Oct. 26 is the actual day that, 200 years ago, the canal was completed, many of the public events are past, but exhibitions at Canalside, Lockport’s Kenan Center and the University at Buffalo’s Anderson Gallery continue. The Seneca Chief replica canal packet boat has only gotten as far east as Fairport, and an intriguing film about the Erie Canal, “America’s Stairway,” is coming to the North Park Theatre and PBS this month.
Even as a big fan of Canalside, I have never been able to think of Buffalo as a canal city. When the “exploding rocks” controversy over replicating rather than uncovering the Erie Canal terminus at the Inner Harbor was finally resolved, I was happy that preservationists prevailed, but also somewhat underwhelmed by the reconstructed Commercial Slip.
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In Lockport, the canal is an omnipresent part of life. Crossing one of its many bridges is a daily occurrence for many. My father, Peter Licata, grew up on Market Street along the banks of the canal in Lowertown, now a National Historic District.
But just as with Buffalo, it took a while for Lockport – which destroyed much of its 19th century commercial district in the interests of urban renewal – to realize that its history could also be part of its revitalization. It’s only within the last two decades that attention focused on the canal’s original Flight of Five lock system, an engineering marvel in its day, but more or less ignored after the canal was enlarged to become the New York State Barge Canal System in 1918 and the Flight of Five was replaced with two large mechanical locks.
Labor of love
It’s taken more than 20 years, but thanks to a mammoth effort that included former Lockport mayor Michael Tucker, the original Flight of Five committee led by Peter J. Welsby and the Lockport Locks Heritage District Corp., which took over the rehab in 2014, three of the original five locks from 1842, with replica wooden gates, have been rehabilitated and can be seen in action. These are the staircase locks that made it possible for vessels to navigate the 60-foot elevation of the Niagara Escarpment.
David Chatt, 69, an engineer and Lockport native who retired from Mahle, Behr, Troy (formerly known as Delphi and before that, Harrison Radiator) supervises hundreds of volunteer lock tenders and is a board member of the LHDC.
Five-ton gates for third restored Lockport lock to be installed
The heavy wooden lock gates for the third of the five 19th-century Erie Canal locks in Lockport are expected to be installed during the week of Sept. 9. David R. Kinyon, president of the Locks Heritage District Corp., said Friday that two five-ton gates made of Kentucky white oak, each operated by one-ton oak balance beams, will be installed
“I kind of fell into it,” Chatt told me. “I was at Delphi, right? And the director of the Niagara History Center called me and wanted to know if I could get some engineers together to come down and operate the locks for the initial dedication ceremony in September of 2014, and I said, ‘Well, geez, that sounds like fun, sure.’ And then I got a phone call a couple weeks later that said, ‘Could you do it one more time?’ I said, ‘Sure,’ then I got a phone call, ‘Could you do this all next summer?'”
Operating the locks is not as complex as you’d think. It takes a few people to push the big wooden balance beams that open and close the gates of the locks. There is also a replica canal boat that gets pushed through the locks as part of the demonstration. Until, and if, the two end locks – which present particular issues – are operational, the three working Flight of Five locks in the middle can only be used for demonstrations, not actual navigation. The two 1918 locks are still needed for that.
Besides leading the lock tenders, Chatt helped facilitate the immense amount of work that went into getting the three locks to function, acting as an intermediary between the LHDC nonprofit and contractors such as the Town of Tonawanda’s Hohl Industrial Services.
According to Chatt, all that work has been well worth it. He cites recreational boaters who are using the canal to make the “Great Loop,” which takes them through the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River, around Florida and up the Eastern Seaboard to New York.
Chatt also asserts that the tourism potential of this history is finally being realized: “It’s been a huge week in Lockport. Really well attended, really well promoted. The centerpiece of what we have now is the locks district. So we’ve transitioned from downtown retail to more service and tourism. I’ve met people from Europe, Asia and Australia who came specifically to Lockport to see the locks. I met a guy on a bicycle yesterday morning who was traveling from Washington State to Maine, using (in part) the Erie Canalway Trail.”
Two faces of progress
Another Lockportian, Paul Lamont, has, like Chatt, been active with the restoration of the locks and was also a LHDC board member. But Lamont’s is a much more cerebral type of preservation.
A senior producer at WNED (now BTPM PBS), from around 2000 to 2011, Lamont now has his own production company, Toward Castle, which has completed full-length documentaries on musician Eric Andersen (“The Songpoet,” 2021) and the Kinzua Dam project (“Lake of Betrayal,” 2017).
Through his new documentary, “America’s Stairway,” which premiered at Lockport’s Palace Theatre on Friday, Lamont, using both archival materials and contemporary interviews, explores the Erie Canal as a feat of engineering and an example of the “technological sublime.”
He includes many viewpoints from historians, who testify to the problems the canal brought with it, including more than 1,000 canal workers killed by explosions, falling rocks and disease. Haudenosaunee scholar Meredith Alberta Palmer speaks of the Indigenous peoples’ struggle against displacement. If the government had had its way, besides the lands that were lost, there would have been a forced Haudenosaunee migration to Kansas.
Narrated by actor Liev Schreiber, “America’s Stairway” is beautifully photographed, with spectacular aerial cinematography of a subject that seems made for such a viewpoint. Toward the end of the film, there is a somewhat unexpected diversion into Lockport’s unfortunate urban renewal destruction, but it is on theme with Lamont’s yin/yang approach. His sense of that balance is excellent. This is not revisionist history: It is what happened, warts and all. Somehow, the wonder remains.
Those who missed the premiere can see it on PBS on Oct. 20, with streaming available thereafter. Those who’d like to see it in another historic theater can catch it at the North Park on Oct. 15, where it is part of the Buffalo International Film Festival. Lamont and partner Robert Borgatti produced the film for the LHDC.
It takes both approaches – Chatt’s and Lamont’s – to bring this bicentennial to relevant life. The Erie Canal may not serve as the artery of progress it once was. But it can still show us a big part of who we were, and are.
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editorial writer
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