Site History

The first great boon to the small village of Rochester at the falls of the Genesee came in 1817 with the State’s decision to build a canal connecting Lake Erie with the Hudson River.  Rochester, with a population of about 5,000 people, was primed for growth when Governor DeWitt Clinton’s “Grand Canal” was officially declared complete in 1825.  The Erie Canal was destined to be Rochester’s chief commercial artery for many decades to come, and the once small village developed rapidly into the “young lion of the west”; the world’s leading Flour City.

Many impressive feats in engineering could be seen along the length of the canal, but perhaps none was more remarkable than the stone Aqueduct which carried the canal over the Genesee River. During the summer of 1821, William Britton of Geddes, New York, was hired to direct the building of the massive Aqueduct project. His credentials included erecting the substantial stone walls surrounding the State Prison in Auburn, New York.  When the flood waters arrived in the spring of 1822, the stone foundations that Britton and his crew had laid were washed away and carried downstream. The mighty waters of the Genesee River proved too strong for man to tame, and it was obvious that the builders needed a stronger construction. 

New plans were drawn up that utilized red sandstone milled from Greece, New York, and crafted into nine low arches, each with a fifty foot span.  The red sandstone was transported east on the canal to the edge of the river where individual stones were slid down wooden chutes to the river bed. Stone arrived on the site in regular intervals, and the Aqueduct quickly took shape.  Finally in September 1823 the Aqueduct was complete, and water flowed across it for the first time.  A procession of boats and barges proudly floated over the Genesee.  Canal traffic could now travel from Little Falls to Lockport.        

It wasn’t long before flaws in the Aqueduct’s design and construction became apparent.  Boats were required to negotiate a virtual ninety-degree turn on the east landing, and the width of the Aqueduct was only 17 feet, even though the overall width of the canal was 40 feet.  This narrow alignment resulted  in numerous squirmishes between “canawlers” to determine who would go across the Aqueduct first.  

The porous nature of the red sandstone, rough craftsmanship and narrow width were all problematic.  Influential businessmen, led by Jonathan Child, petitioned the State to expand the width and alignment of the Aqueduct, and in 1838 work began on a larger Aqueduct to replace the earlier one. This time Onondaga Limestone was used and the crossing was designed to be 45 feet wide by 7 feet deep, and utilized seven low arches to cross the river. The second Aqueduct was completed in 1842 and spans the Genesee River to this day.  

The railroads through western New York, which had begun to appear in the 1830s eventually, took over the role of the canal.  In Rochester the peak year for goods shipped on the canal was 1854, one year after the New York Central consolidation in the western part of the state.  The enlargement of the canal in 1918 to create a “Barge Canal”, rerouted the course to the southern edge of the city, removing it from the central business district.  This was for the most part without protest as by this time the once “Grand Canal” was looked upon as more of a nuisance within the downtown core.

For the first time in the city’s history attention was now focused on new uses for the former Erie Canal right-of-way and the Aqueduct. The need for additional downtown streets parallel to Main Street was felt, and a formal city plan prepared by Brunner and Olmsted in 1911 contained a scheme for an “Aqueduct Boulevard” following the course of the old canal westward from South Avenue.  This idea was combined with a plan to convert the eastern and western approaches of the canal bed into a depressed trolley route.  A major influence of this plan was the desire to remove the heavy inter-urban trolley cars from surface street tracks, and divert that traffic below street level into a subway bed. 

Broad Street was dedicated in 1924 and brought about a new phase in the history of the Aqueduct when in 1927 the Rochester subway system was finally completed.  In 1929 the Dewey Avenue streetcars were diverted into the subway to speed transportation service to Kodak Park thereby introducing intra-city transit into the system.  Ironically, intra-city transportation, merely a second thought in the development of the subway, became its mainstay in later years.  Use of the subway peaked in 1946 and 1947 with 5.1 million passengers per year; however, a sharp decline in usage began as the population started to push outside the confines of a dense urban environment and into the suburbs.  Finally, the need for a Thruway connector became too pressing and the subway ended its run of service in 1956 paving the way for I-490.   

The extension of Broad Street to the east of South Avenue in conjunction with the development of Midtown Plaza from 1959-1961 emphasized the importance of the Broad Street Bridge in managing downtown traffic flow.  In the late 1960s when city engineers discovered serious deterioration of the bridge superstructure officials moved quickly on reconstruction plans.  Ironically enough, the 130 year old Aqueduct needed only minor attention while the 50 year old concrete superstructure had to be entirely replaced.  The reconstruction was undertaken from 1972-1974 and carries four traffic lanes and two parking lanes.  The interior of the Aqueduct has been abandoned since 1956, but overall is considered to be in good condition.  While the Aqueduct may be closed to the public, it prominently spans the Genesee in Downtown Rochester, awaiting for its next major rebirth.