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Lockport, New York

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A city and the county-seat of Niagara county, New York, U.S.A., on the Erie Canal, 26 m. by rail N. by E. of Buffalo and 56 m. W. of Rochester. Pop. (1900) 16,581, of whom 2036 were foreign-born and 160 were negroes; (19r0 census) 17, 9 70. It is served by the New York Central & Hudson River and the Erie railways, by the International railway (electric interurban), and by the Erie Canal. The city owes its name to the five double locks of the canal, which here falls 66 ft. (over a continuation of the Niagara escarpment locally known as "Mountain Ridge") from the level of Lake Erie to that of the Genesee river. In 1909 a scheme was on foot to replace these five locks by a huge lift lock and to construct a large harbour immediately W. of the city. The surplus water from Tonawanda Creek, long claimed both by the Canal and by the Lockport manufacturers, after supplying the canal furnishes water-power, and electric power is derived from Niagara. The factory products, mostly paper and wood-pulp, flour and cereal foods, and foundry and machine-shop products, were valued in 1905 at $5,807,980. Lockport lies in a rich farming and fruit (especially apple and pear) country, containing extensive sandstone and Niagara limestone quarries, and is a shipping point for the fruits and grains and the limestone and sandstone of the surrounding country. Many buildings in the business part of the city are heated by the Holly distributing system, which pipes steam from a central station or plant, and originated in Lockport. The city owns and operates the water-works, long operated under the Holly system, which, as well as the Holly distributing system, was devised by Birdsill Holly, a civil engineer of Lockport. In 1909 a new system was virtually completed, water being taken from the Niagara river at Tonawanda and pumped thence to a stand-pipe in Lockport.

The site, that of the most easterly village in New York state held by the Neutral Nation of Indians, was part of the tract bought by the Holland Company in 1792-1793. Subsequently most of the land on which the city stands was bought from the Holland Company by Esek Brown, the proprietor of a local tavern, and fourteen others, but there were few settlers until after 1820. In 1822 the place was made the county-seat, and in 1823 it was much enlarged by the settlement here of workmen on the Erie Canal, and was the headquarters for a time of the canal contractors. It was incorporated as a village in 1829, was reached by the Erie railway in 1852, and in 1865 was chartered as a city.