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The “Erie School of Engineering”
The United States at this time had no native-born trained civil engineers, and had to rely on trained engineers from abroad. One of those men, Englishman William Weston, was described by historian Elting E. Morison in this way: “Knowing not much, he knew a great deal more than anyone else and was in frequent demand.” The commission instead entrusted men with proven surveying experience for the undertaking, and those men would learn on the job and adapt their approaches to the circumstances for each portion of the waterway. The chief engineer of the canal was Benjamin Wright; assistant chief engineer was James Geddes. The commission had evidence of their surveying skill, at least, when in the spring of 1818 Wright and Geddes took readings to record the elevations along the course of the canal; they covered two different routes from Rome to Syracuse. When their readings were compared afterwards, the difference between them was less than two inches. Charles Brodhead would be appointed chief engineer of the eastern portion of the canal. Writing in American Heritage’s Invention & Technology, author John Tarkov wrote of what would later be dubbed the Erie School of Engineering:
In all the many other details of canal building, they learned as they went, becoming engineers long after the title had been conferred on them. This was as true for the younger engineers on the canal as it was for men like Geddes and Wright. Virtually every American engineer of consequence during the first half of the nineteenth century learned his profession either on the Erie Canal or from an engineer who had been there. The Erie was truly, as a number of historians have said, America’s first school of engineering. Men learned things there because they had to, and they learned them in whatever way they could: by mistakes, by watching and asking questions, and by accepting expert authority without regard to rank.
The planned waterway was divided into three parts: east, middle, and west, each with its own topographical challenges. The engineers invented and adapted as they worked. Two useful inventions were a machine for felling trees and one for pulling stumps, speeding up the process of clearing land. Canvass White, who had observed the English canal system, adapted the formula for hydraulic cement, which was the hard and durable substance used in lining canal locks and arches, to the types of limestone found near the canal construction. The local formulization eliminated the need to import hydraulic cement from England, which would have necessitated either a much higher budget or substituting a less desirable construction method.
The completed Erie Canal celebrated by Governor Clinton in 1825 was 363 miles long, from Albany to Buffalo. It had 83 locks and 18 aqueducts. The total cost was $7,143,789 (roughly $228 million today). The laborers, armed with simple tools like axes and shovels, were paid between 80 cents and a dollar a day. The canal would contribute to the rapid expansion of cities along its banks like Buffalo, Albany, Syracuse and Rochester, earning the waterway yet another nickname: “Mother of Cities.” As a project that drastically transformed the landscape in parts of the state, however, the canal also exacted a human cost, displacing the indigenous peoples who had lived in its path.
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