the erie canal as a superhighway

The NY Times had an interesting article a couple days ago on the Erie Canal. Perhaps most intriguing was not the contents of the article, but the title of the article: "Hints of Comeback for Nation's First Superhighway" -- suggesting that canals and freeways belong to the same category of structure. And to some degree, of course they do -- both are infrastructures, both serve to transmit goods and people. But more importantly, yet perhaps less obviously, both have an effect on the territory in which they reside, influencing land values and potential building sites, determining what parcels are seen as viable for commerce and what parcels will be left to farmers and deer. So when you build a superhighway -- whether it is navigated by cars and trucks or barges and towboats -- you are also building a city.

But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's go back to the beginning of the story:

"Completed in 1825, rerouted in parts and rebuilt twice since then, the Erie Canal flows 338 miles across New York State, between Waterford in the east and Tonawanda in the west. It carved out a trail for immigrants who settled the Midwest, and it cemented the position of New York City, which connects with the canal via the Hudson River, as the nation's richest port. In 1855, at the canal's height as a thoroughfare for goods and people, 33,241 shipments passed through the lock at Frankfort, 54 miles east of Syracuse, according to Craig Williams, history curator at the New York State Museum in Albany.

Though diminished in the late 1800s by competition from railroads, commercial shipping along the canal grew until the early 1950s, when interstate highways and the new St. Lawrence Seaway lured away most of the cargo and relegated the canal to a scenic backwater piloted by pleasure boats."

detail from 1853 map of the erie canal, showing canal profile

While the canal remains a rarely utilized means of transportation, usage is rising:

"The canal still remains the most fuel-efficient way to ship goods between the East Coast and the upper Midwest. One gallon of diesel pulls one ton of cargo 59 miles by truck, 202 miles by train and 514 miles by canal barge, Ms. Mantello said. A single barge can carry 3,000 tons, enough to replace 100 trucks.

As the price of diesel climbed over $4 a gallon this summer -- the national average is now about $3.31 a gallon -- more shippers rediscovered the Erie Canal. On one trip in mid-October, the Margot motored down the canal at about seven knots, pushing a barge loaded with a giant green crane. The machine was being transported from Huger, S.C., to the Pinney Dock, operated by the Kinder Morgan Company in Ashtabula, Ohio.

"It really just came down to economics," said Lee Demers, the dock's manager. The other option was to move the crane through the St. Lawrence Seaway, adding more than 1,000 miles and greater fuel costs to the trip."

buffalo, ny along the erie canal, 1903 postcard

The return of the canal, as minimal as it may be (at least for now), suggests a comparison of the differing effects of these two categories of superhighway -- automotive and liquid -- might be in order. To some degree, time has dampened trace of the canal in the larger cities it passes through -- Rochester, Tonawanda, Schneteday. The warehouses and factories which once lined the canal (as seen above) may have disappeared. However, the urban pattern that they instigated remains:

erie canal aqueduct, in rochester ny, late 1890s

the same site, today with bridge built over aqueduct highlighted

I have heard it said that there are two kinds of markings on the land that never disappear: roads and property lines; I don't think it would be wrong to add 'canals' as a third kind of permanent marking (by this it is not meant that roads and property lines (and canals) never disappear, but rather that the trace of these things can always be discerned, if you know where and how to look).

Compare to the arrangement of commercial and industrial structures a few miles to the west, generated by freeways:

via google maps

The canal and the freeway can also be compared in terms of their effect on rural territories; the effect the canal has had on urban patterns in more rural portions of New York is unmistakable (though, it should be noted, a railway parallels the canal, so this effect is also a result of the presence of the rail line):

newark, ny, along the erie canal, via google maps; click to jump there

We can compare this to contemporary growth in a rural area, along a I-81, north of albany, new york:

This is too brief a look at the effects of canals and freeways to really examine why they are associated with such disparate patterns of urbanism. But I think it does suggest that such study -- and the corresponding techniques of insertion that could develop from it -- is essential to the development of a post-Corbusian urbanism, an urbanism that sees cities not as collections of buildings but as a lace of processes, both natural and artificial, in tension and fluctuating.

Posted by eatingbark at November 6, 2008 2:59 PM