Two hundred years ago this month, New York State officially opened the Erie Canal. Led by Governor DeWitt Clinton aboard a boat named the Seneca Chief, a small flotilla headed from Buffalo to Albany and then down the Hudson River to New York City. The boats carried a diverse cargo—whitefish, flour, butter, maple and cedar wood, a menagerie of animals and two kegs of water. One keg would be famously poured by Clinton into the Atlantic Ocean, the “marriage of the waters” symbolizing the connection made by the Canal.
Dewitt Clinton High School, “The Marriage of the Waters” oil painting, September 22, 1926. Painting by C.Y. Turner, 1905. Photograph by Eugene de Salignac. Department of Bridges/Plant & Structures collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
Creating a water route between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes was proposed many times. In his history of the canal, Erie Water West, Ronald E. Shaw notes that the Dutch, the English and French colonial settlers all considered how to develop inland water routes. Preceding them, of course, Native Americans were traveling through the interior by canoe which allowed passage via narrow streams. No less a personage than George Washington traveled through the Mohawk Valley and suggested using the waterways to connect with western territories.
Many leaders associated with the Revolutionary War pop up in accounts of the decades-long effort to develop a route and fund its construction. Gouverneur Morris, Philip Schuyler, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, John Jay and James Madison all played a role. There was intrigue between the Federalists and the Jeffersonian group—Tammany—which later evolved to become the tarnished society of grifters controlling city government. But in 1812, led by Martin Van Buren, the focus was ideology as much as patronage. Presidents advocated for improvements to roads and bridges, but didn’t fund them. State leaders quibbled. Feuds, chicanery, grudges and political muscle shaped the debate around a canal.
Erie Canal and Feeders, 1886. Endpaper, The Birth of the Erie Canal, Harvey Chalmers II, Bookman Associates, 1960. NYC Municipal Library.
In the 1790s the State Legislature supported various studies and surveys of the Mohawk Valley to determine possible passageways. The State Legislature created a Commission to study a canal linking the Great Lakes to the Hudson River in 1808 and the project moved in fits and starts. The War of 1812 and political differences hampered progress until in 1815, when various prominent New Yorkers reinvigorated the process. A notice inviting respectable New Yorkers (men) to a meeting at the City Hotel for the purpose of drafting a petition to re-establish a commission to develop the canal, was published in the New York Evening Post on December 29, beneath an ad for a show named “Budget of Blunders.” The meeting was attended by 46-year old De Witt Clinton, who already had served as a United States senator, New York City Mayor and who lost the 1812 Presidential race to James Madison. Clinton became the canal’s greatest proponent. Following the City Hotel meeting, he drafted the petition asking the State Legislature to fund a Commission to study the feasibility of linking Lake Erie and the Hudson River.
A commission was re-established in 1816 and its members, including Clinton, explored and documented. Finally, in 1817, the State Legislature passed a law authorizing the canal and providing the authority to issue $7 million in bonds to fund it. By the groundbreaking on July 4, 1817, DeWitt Clinton was the Governor and things began to move. The canal was termed “Clinton’s Ditch” or “Clinton’s Folly” and widely ridiculed. Until it was lauded.
Lockport, Erie Canal, 1825. From the book by Cadwallader D. Colden, Memoir, prepared at the request of a committee of the Common council of the city of New York, and presented to the mayor of the city, at the celebration of the completion of the New York canals. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/3a314030-c645-012f-7237-58d385a7bc34
Hard to believe, but New York City was not the pre-eminent trading port in the early 19th century. Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia and even New Orleans were front runners. The Canal changed that. A New York Times article about the centennial celebration reported, “It must be remembered that Philadelphia was a more important city in 1826 than New York, and Boston had a larger commerce as well. The future metropolis included about 150,000 population and was looked upon as a rather isolated community. Everybody admitted its splendid harbor, but there were many other harbors. The trouble with New York, said the wiseacres, was its distance from the productive districts. ‘It never would amount to much.’”
According to Gerard Koeppel, writing in the Encyclopedia of New York City 2nd Edition, “In 1815 the city handled less than one-fifth of U.S. exports and in 1860 well over one-third. In 1820 the city was a distant third to Baltimore and Philadelphia in flour exports; by 1827 it was the runaway leader. In 1821 (the first year of available statistics) the city handled just more than one-third of U.S. imports, and by 1860 more than two-thirds, with six times the imports as second-place Boston.”
Grand Canal Celebration. View of the fleet preparing to form in line. Stokes’ Iconography of New York, v.3 pl. 95a. NYC Municipal Library
When the Erie Canal opened in 1825 it was widely regarded as an engineering marvel, planned by people with little-to-no formal training and built by immigrants, newly arrived in the United States, many from Ireland. The canal was 363 miles long and used 83 locks to transition 700 feet of drops along its length. Tolls collected along the route covered costs and generated a profit. Termed the most important public works project of the 19th century, the canal had an enormous impact on New York City, and on growth in the western territories and states—particularly Michigan, Illinois, Ohio. New arrivals easily moved west, and products moved east.
There was even a song, “the Meeting of the Waters of Hudson & Erie,” which claimed it was not the anticipated wealth that would fill coffers that was celebrated but rather, a vast and sublime project.
Tis, that Genius has triumph’d—and Science prevail’d,
Tho’ Prejudice flouted, and Envy assail’d,
It is, that the vassals of Europe may see
The progress of mind, in a land that is free.
Various materials in the Municipal Archives and Library shed light on the effort to fund, build and celebrate the canal. The Common Council Collection, dating from 1670 to 1885, yielded several Canal Committee folders, beginning in 1818. That seemed a good start since that was the same year that ground was broken on the Erie Canal. However, these contained various petitions and observations dealing with the putrid canal along Canal Street, sewers and linking the contaminated Collect Pond to the river.
Canal Committee resolution, March 25, 1825. Common Council Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
The 1825 Canal Commission folder contains Council records about the opening of the canal as well as the more prosaic content.
City merchants met at the Tontine Coffee House and recommended that the Common Council provide funding for a celebration of “the arrival of the first Canal Boat from Lake Erie to the waters of the Hudson.”
A September 12, 1825, resolution proposed supporting a public celebration of the completion of the great Western Canal and was referred to committee.
Resolution on an application to form a committee “for a public celebration of the completion of the great Western Canal, making a junction [of] our inland seas with the Ocean…” September 12, 1825. Canal Committee, Common Council Collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
A November 10, 1825, report to the council on the festivities, reported that “the celebration both by land, and by water, has been in a style of unusual magnificence and splendour. That it has so far transcended all anticipation and been so ably conducted, by the gentlemen to whom it was more immediately considered, as to require a full and detailed report.”
“Commemoration by the City of New York of the completion of the Grand Erie Canal, which unites the waters of the great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. The Committee of the Corporation of the City of New York,… respectfully report, that the celebration both by land, and by water, has been in a style of unusual magnificence & splendour. That is has so far transcended all anticipation….” Canal Committee, Common Council records, November 10, 1825. NYC Municipal Archives.
Resolution on celebrations, pg. 2. Canal Committee, Common Council records, November 10, 1825. NYC Municipal Archives.
The celebration included a parade of trades people including butchers, saddlers and “the city’s firemen marching with nine shining fire engines, the pride of their eyes and glory of the city” according to a New York Times retrospective in 1926. The same article noted that “The festivities of the day were closed in the evening by the illumination of public buildings and the principal hotels…The illumination of the City Hall contributed largely to the brilliant appearance of Broadway. It was illuminated by 2,302 brilliant lights, consisting of 1,542 wax candles, 450 lamps (giving the effect of a large transparency) and 310 variegated lamps, so that the front of the Hall presented a spectacle of peculiar splendor and brilliancy.”
And for this, the Common Council resolved that the Comptroller authorize $5000 to fully fund the event and its memorialization.
Resolution to pay for the celebrations of the Erie Canal. Canal Committee, Common Council records, Dec. 5, 1825. NYC Municipal Archives.
A century later, the ground-breaking nature of the canal had been overtaken by railroads and subsequently by the interstate highway system. But canals were not abandoned. In 1918, the State expanded the canal system and at the 1926 centennial celebration, Governor Al Smith claimed that the revenue from the canal exceeded expectations. According to historian Carol Sheriff, the celebration was delayed by a year because supporters “faced the same substantial hurdle: convincing elected officials, particularly those who remained skeptical of the Barge Canal’s sustainability, that state funds should be spent on celebrating the Erie Canal at all.”
Despite the challenges, the Erie Canal Centennial Commission, chaired by DeWitt Clinton’s grandson sponsored a celebration in the City, featuring a reprise of the marriage of the waters, a boat parade that began at Spuyten Duyvil in upper Manhattan and fireworks in the evening.
Steamer Macom reception to 100 Years Marriage of the Waters Erie Canal opening, October 7, 1926. Photograph by Eugene de Salignac, Deptartment of Bridges/Plant & Structures collection, NYC Municipal Archives.
This year, the Erie Canal Bicentennial Commission coordinated events in towns that lined the former canal. With a theme of “Raising More Voices” events included planting white pine trees along the route as a tribute to the Haudenosaunee original residents of the Mohawk Valley. The commission sponsored the World Canals Convention and explored economic revitalization tied to the canal. Finally, a replica of the Seneca Chief set sail from Buffalo on September 24, making stops along the way and gathering water from each town along the route. It is scheduled to arrive in New York City on October 25 and the collected water will be dispersed.