Published: September 05, 2008 03:20 pm            

ERIE CANAL DISCOVERY: Buffalo’s Inner Harbor

The Erie Canal Harbor in Buffalo received a “facelift” and is celebrating its new rebirth. With a current price tag of $53 million and counting, it’s not hard to understand why some detractors, today, still question the expenditure, the same as others did when DeWitt Clinton asked the state for $7 million to build his 363-mile ditch. The original western terminus of the historic waterway has been redeveloped to include a new pedestrian bridge over the canal and re-watered Commercial Slip, infused with the history of the canal. Among other attractions, visitors can view old Lloyd Street foundations for the Steamship Hotel dating back to the canal’s early years when it served as the Gateway to the West. (This is the site where reluctant city fathers prophesied that the “ancient” rocks buried there from the 1800s were so old they would surely explode if they were to once again see daylight!) In addition to the stone ruins, there is an impressive boardwalk, an interpretive time line and a controversial three-story “ghosted facade” with nine images that show key events in the canal’s history. There is also 600 feet of floating docks. The initial facelift is just part of a planned $400 million development to provide 500,000 square feet of mixed use, hotel, office, retail space (including a Bass Pro anchor store) and restaurants.

Visitors to Buffalo’s Erie Canal Harbor today can see a restored site about the size of a football field including a new wooden Erie Canal Whipple truss foot bridge that connects the new boardwalk Central Wharf to the cobblestone “Commercial Street.” The Whipple truss, patented in 1847, was developed by Squire Whipple, who made a stronger version of previous truss bridges. It was also known as a “double-intersection truss,” because the diagonal tension members cross two panels, while those on earlier versions cross only one. Another refinement, the Triple Whipple, was built with the thought that if two are better than one, three must be stronger yet. The Whipple Bridge built for Buffalo employs the iconic “bowstring” truss that resembles a taunt string under a bow frame. Along with its Erie Canal uses, the Whipple truss gained immediate popularity with railroads as it was stronger and more rigid than other bridges. It was less common for highway use, but a few wrought iron examples survive. Here in Lockport, a Whipple truss bridge, known as Hitchens Bridge, crossed the canal at State Road near Hinman. It was named for the family that once lived in the stone mansion built near the canal. Hitchens Bridge was removed during the Barge Canal expansion in the early 1900s.

The new Erie Canal site in Buffalo includes a restored Commercial Slip, located in the same spot that once served as the historic nexus for Erie Canal and Great Lakes travel. A small version of the original waterway is completed with a man-made waterfall used to circulate the standing water within the newly re-watered Erie Canal Slip. The slip is available to recreational boaters from Lake Erie and the Niagara River that wish to tie-up and visit the neighboring Naval Park and other new attractions. Boaters who enter the slip today, quickly get a better sense of the spatial limitations of the historic Clinton’s Ditch as they attempt to maneuver their modern power-craft in a canal made to accommodate mule-drawn vessels.

Doug Farley is director of the Erie Canal Discovery Center in Lockport. Contact him at 434-7433. The Discovery Center is open for the season.

        

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