In case you think i’ve lost my way, I’m planning a 5d post on the ruins in the immediate vicinity of the Erie Canal, and then there’ll be one more zone I want to identify. After that, I’ll be out of those zones . . .
I am truly stunned by these magnificent photos of gorgeous structures built with rudimentary technology and lasting over a century and a half.
Lock 56 Lyons double chamber built 1850
Lock 56 center island steps
Lock 60 Macedon looking eastward from the center island
Lock 59 Lockville Newark northwest chamber
Lock 58 Newark north chamber
Lock 53 Clyde northwest chamber entrance
All photos and captions come thanks to Bob Stopper, to whom I am indebted for being able to publish these. For more photos on this area of the canal, click here. For more historic photos but of the Barge Canal iteration of the waterway, click here.
tugster: a waterblog 
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November 16, 2014 at 11:42 am
mageb
I’m absolutely riveted to your pages by these images. What happened to the gates? I’ll go look it all up. Thanks.
November 16, 2014 at 9:39 pm
tugster
mage– i’m guessing that the gates–all wood–went the way of all that decays . . .
November 16, 2014 at 10:57 pm
William Lafferty
There still exist similar ruins of comparable vintage here throughout Ohio, remnants of the Ohio & Erie Canal, Pennsylvania and Ohio Canal, Wabash & Erie Canal, and several others, although not as plentiful as those of the Erie Canal. The same west of my hometown, Chicago, remnants of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. Rochester entrepreneur John Odenbach built his first shipyard, supposedly, around an abandoned Erie Canal lock at Pittsford, where he built his innovative canal motorships Dolomite 1, 3, and 4. Back in the day the grandparents of my wife of the day lived across from Allendale Columbia School on Allens Creek Road (in a most handsome house) and when visiting I used to run south past the country club (Oak Hill) to the canal, trying to find that site, but never could. Any idea where it was? Odenbach’s second, World War II shipyard was at Greece, quite a story in itself, and his third, also during the war, at Ojus, Florida.
November 17, 2014 at 6:52 am
tugster
william– thx for bringing up the Odenbachs. here are some photos of their vessels: http://www.dolomitegroup.com/about/history/shipbuilding
January 17, 2015 at 4:19 pm
Franz
The pics of Dolomite vessels in NY City are from when the vessels were in NYC for completion and fitting out. They had to be completed there because they could not pass under canal bridges with superstructure in place. That additional cost pushed both both Dolomite Marine Shipbuilding and sister company Rochester Shipbuilding into Bankruptcy in 1937.
Y-104 in the last few pictures in NOT an Odenbach build. Y-104 was built in a Texas shipyard, and the pictures are of the Texas yard, not Odenbach in Greece. Odenbach’s Greece operation was completely enclosed in a 1347 foot long building (actually enclosed crane structure) and all 73 Odenbach Y tankers, along with multiple barges, floating cranes and derricks were built there. 1 yacht was also built at Greece yard.
I have absolutely no information on any Odenbach builds in Ojus, Florida. If anyone does, I’d appreciate being filled in.
January 17, 2015 at 4:05 pm
Franz
The Odenbach story is a long and very interesting legend. But then, what do I know, I’ve only got 8 years into winding my way through the legend, beginning with John Henry Odenbach operating the steam ferry Rosalie for his family’s Lake Ontario shore hotel. Along the path I’ve come to conclude JH was a man I’d have loved to talk with, and wouldn’t have played Poker with for all the tea in China.
I began with what I’d been told by one of the men who worked for JH during the Depression at the Pittsford yard, and Greece, As we now sit, the yard in Greece is about to be demolished to make room for another of the never ending shopping centers, and Pitsford is but a strange looking spot on a Google Satellite picture. In spite of hours invested with Town Historians, creatures less mobile than rocks in the wall of an Erie Canal lock, I am unable to establish if JH built the Pittsford yard or took over an existing yard. There is a big gap between 1918 and 1930 I’m finding unfillable.
Pittsford yard existed at the end of the spur left to serve Pittsford industry when the canal relocated in 1918, and filled JH’s head with new ideas. Today it is part of a nature trail.
More on the unfortunate side, JH evidently never maintained a journal, nor did his son John who joined the company after Graduating NotreDame in 36. The reality is nobody bothered to retain many records, most of which went to landfill when Flower City Printing cleared the basement of the concrete building at Dewey Avenue for their use.
John Henry Odenbach was certainly a savvy businessman of his time. He had a talent for looking over the wall, seeing a different way to do a task, and talent for attracting the people he needed. As his grandson remarked, “Pansies don’t build ships on Lake Ontario.”
Some day I shall finish this writing.
January 17, 2015 at 7:03 pm
tugster
Franz– I look forward to your continuing your writing. Thanks much for filling in the missing info.
January 18, 2015 at 2:13 pm
Franz
Tugster, I do have maps showing the exact location of Pittsford Yard, and a 1930± pic taken from an airplane which might be helpful in understanding the Legend.
John Henry benefited much from the place in time he was in, then just a few years later his intertied companies suffered mightily from the Great Depression. JH followed the path from downtown businessman’s bar owner to quarrying and selling Dolomite rock, a business he had no background in, largely reinvented the way the stone business operated, saw the possibility of shipping stone via Barge Canal when the State generously relocated the canal, and used it to expand his customer base. His location in Rochester certainly didn’t hurt him, with agriculture, several steel furnaces and foundries, and glass plants could easily have consumed the production of the first quarry, but that didn’t satisfy JH’s desire to grow, so he bought another quarry a couple miles away, and next to the canal as well.
The rebuild of the canal had shown him how to haul rock out of a ditch, so he reversed the process and put his rock into barges in the ditch, and pushed the barges with his tugs, another portion of the empire he was building. That led to building his own barges, after all, he could design and build better to his purpose than he could buy, and he could do it cheaper growing another business as he went.
Pittsford was the next logical step when it became available, eliminate the need to trailer a new barge to the canal meant less cost and fewer problems, and it gave him a repair yard for his 9 steam tugs working the Lake and canal. It also gave him a place to build his next toy, and a place to keep his skilled men working through winter when rock wasn’t quarried as it is today.
Dolomite 1 was reconstructed in Pittsford from a 30+ year old hull JH bought as an abandoned wreck and floated to his new yard. She was also the experiment to see if he could duplicate and improve on the Brit invention of welded hull construction (HMS Fulgar) and build himself a floating vacuum cleaner that would go into Lake Ontario and mine free sand he could then sell for concrete. She was also rebuilt with an elevating pilot house and superstructure that allowed her to clear the lift bridges and transit the canal.
When free sand proved too expensive, she came back into the yard and was converted again to haul coal and cement back and forth across the lake.
Hull #2 was a close repeat of #1, without the vacuum cleaner, 3 and 4 were constructed from keel up in Pittsford, and became the end of the line when the Depression economy put Dolimite Marine and Rochester Shipbuilding into a nasty & bitter Bankruptcy that would take years to untangle.
Pittsford yard was in limbo, Dolimite 1 through 4 were in limbo as assets of the Bankruptcy, and the Trustee labored for years to reach a solution.
Most men probably would have quit building ships, but JH damn well didn’t. His son joined the business in 36 after graduating, and he put the boy John II to work learning the business. (see story of Amaretto)
JH had himself in a bit of a pinch in 37 when he took a contract to build 9 steamers for Lend Lease, originally planned as Pittsford builds, and found himself with no yard, no equipment, and no funding. JH turned those 3 into assets, and managed to use them to build Odenbach Shipbuilding in Greece beginning in 41 after some promotion that would have left PT Barnum envious. To his credit, he carried his core workforce through the worst times so they were still with him when things turned.
All 4 Dolomites met death during the first years of US involvement in the War, and Odenbach’s multiple companies built 77± Y tankers for the Army to replace them along with barges, derricks, floating cranes and 1 yacht.
The end of the war brought an end to ship orders as well, but JH managed to find another government contract to store and reship grain to feed Europe in the Greece yard until the Government took that from him.
As I’ve walked this path hunting detail after detail, I have come to be convinced JH and John II were looking into he future in 41, and Greece would in their minds become Rochester’s new Yacht Club and pleasure boat harbor after the War. It might have come to be were it not for Uncle Sam wanting the building and yard to constrict airplane components. Between the last crane and the Air Force taking the building, Odenbach Shipbuilding managed to build precast cellars for around 20 houses that still sit to the South of the shipyard, and damn near create Odenbachtown as Rochester’s Levittown.
Today, we await the fall of the 1347 foot monument as we saw the last King Iron swing bridge go to the smelter a few years ago when the Coast Guard protected us from the railroad swing bridge that was a hazard in their minds, even though it had been in place for near 100 years without being a problem to any vessel.
One absolute is that he couldn’t accomplish 10% of what he did in today’s world with all the wonderful government agencies helping him.