About The America’s Stairway Documentary
Locks Heritage District Aerial Photo by Alan Schwartz; Courtesy of Lockport Locks Heritage District Corp.
Why America’s Stairway
America’s Stairway places the historic Flight of Five locks on the Erie Canal in Lockport, New York, squarely in the American narrative as a symbol of a young and developing nation. It draws a direct line between the Erie Canal, the Flight of Five, and the birth of American tourism to today’s heritage tourism industry which is inextricably linked to community-based, grassroots preservation efforts and a community’s sense of place. In doing so, it has meaning and resonance that transcends both time and geographic location.
America's Stairway is a national story. For the first time in a documentary film intended for national PBS distribution, the Erie Canal and specifically the Flight of Five—the crowning achievement of America’s canal era and of those who envisioned scaling the Niagara Escarpment —is examined in relation to the natural and technological sublime, the birth of American tourism and how those ideas are linked to today’s embracing of heritage tourism, preservation, and sense of place. It will serve as an inspiration and a catalyst for other communities to explore and preserve their history and is a profound reminder that great moments in our nation’s narrative can be found in small towns and communities across the American landscape.
South Street Seaport : Painting by William James Bennett, “View of South Street from Maiden Lane”; Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of New York
The Grand Northern Tour
Because of its location on the canal, Lockport became part of what was known as the “Grand Northern Tour,” a leisurely trip across the northern United States and Canada with the highlight being a visit to Niagara Falls, 30-miles west of Lockport. For the burgeoning middle class, the canal allowed easy, inexpensive travel and historians refer to this era as the birth of American tourism. The majestic stone architecture of the Flight of Five, or the “Stairway to Niagara,” as one historian calls them, became to technology what Niagara Falls was to nature—an icon of the sublime. The locks at Lockport were renowned around the country and in Europe and by the 1830s, had put Lockport on the map.
Traveling the Erie Canal : Painting by E. L. Henry; Courtesy of Albany Institute of History & Art
‘Visitors to Niagara Falls’ by Silas Holmes (1850)
Our Story
America celebrates the 200th Anniversary of the completion of the original Erie Canal in the year 2025. America’s Stairway explores a unique, untold story. It tells of an American landmark, once the focal point of a nation and beyond, then overlooked, but now emerging in the new light of the twenty-first century.
The Flight of Five Locks are Locks 67, 68, 69, 70 and 71 of the 72-lock Enlarged Erie Canal. Erie Canal Locks 67-71 were completed in 1842 as part of the First Enlargement of the Erie Canal, or Clinton’s Ditch. The Lockport Locks were regarded as a modern engineering marvel at the time that the Erie Canal was originally opened in 1825, enabling water-borne commerce and passengers to travel from New York City to the Great Lakes via the Hudson River and the man-made inland waterway system, and opening up the Midwest to development.
The Flight of Five is often referred to as “staircase locks” due to the immediate succession from one lock to the next. However, during the conversion of the Erie Canal to the Erie Barge Canal, the southern flight of locks was demolished and removed, and the northern Flight of Five went into disuse, other than to serve as a spillway after 1922. Since 2003, the Lockport Locks Heritage District Corporation and the City of Lockport have collaborated with federal and state agencies to successfully rehabilitate three of the five locks in the abandoned northern tier of the Flight of Five back into working order. Returning this iconic 19th Century engineering marvel to working condition has been a major component of the City of Lockport’s strategy to enhance the community’s Erie Canal attractions as a major heritage tourism destination.
Celebrating the Restoration of the Flight of Five Photo by Joed Viera; Courtesy of Lockport Locks Heritage District Corp.
In the Making
Production of America’s Stairway is ongoing. We are excited to bring this documentary to life and share this momentous moment in history with communities around the Nation.
Recently, our Producer/ Director Paul Lamont sat down with Patrick McGreevy, author of Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping of America. McGreevy is a Professor of History and Director of the Center of American Studies and Research at the American University of Beirut, he shared his expertise on this important time in our Nation’s histoty.
Our Producer/ Director Paul Lamont, along with his team, sat down with Historian Tom Chambers. As an established scholar and teacher of American History, with an emphasis on the history of tourism, war, and memory of the early republic, we are excited to have Tom share his expertise in America’s Stairway.
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