Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping

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Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping of America (Excelsior Editions)

The story of the Erie Canalâ€™s completion and its place in the larger narrative of American modernity and progress.

The stunning achievement of the Erie Canalâ€™s completion is brought to life in this riveting story. In the spring of 1821, thousands of workers descended on the isolated village of Lockport, New York, twenty miles east of Niagara Falls. Their goal was to dig and blast a waterway through the so-called Mountain Ridge, the escarpment over which the Niagara River flows, and to divert some of that riverâ€™s flow eastward, thus completing the Erie Canal. This final obstacle would take five years to overcome, and the Lockport Locks, the ingenious device that carried boats to the top of the ridge, would come to be seen as an icon of American achievementâ€”like the Erie Canal itself, a stairway to empire.

Taking advantage of a rich trove of construction records, travelersâ€™ writings, and visual material, Stairway to Empire examines the triumphs and tensions of this iconic American accomplishment and its place in the larger narrative of American modernity and progress. In the decades that followed its completion, the canal rearranged political and economic power on the continent, forming new connections and rupturing old ones, and creating winners and losers in the process. Piercing the barrier of the Appalachian Mountains, the Erie Canal established New York City as the American metropolis, the Northâ€™s economic ascendance over the South, and the United States as the dominant power in North America. Yet even as it explores these local and continental implications and the divergent meanings that have been attributed to them, Stairway to Empire also attends to the silences and shadows of a particular event (cutting through the Mountain Ridge), a particular place (Lockport), and the stories we have constructed to try to understand them.

â€œHistorians of technology will appreciate [McGreevyâ€™s] efforts to highlight the interconnectedness of environmental, social, and technological agents in Lockportâ€™s transition from a central node in Americaâ€™s nineteenth-century transportation infrastructure to a largely forgotten, postindustrial backwater.â€ â€” Technology and Culture

â€œStairway to Empire offers a rare combination: a scholarly monograph with an autobiographical twist. In this labor of love, Patrick McGreevy â€¦ offers a richly textured biography of his hometown of Lockport, New York â€¦ It is deeply researched, interdisciplinary in nature, and written with sophistication and clarity.â€ â€” Journal of American History

â€œâ€¦McGreevy has produced a volume that not only details the story of the Erie Canalâ€™s completion but also considers its importance as a physical representation of American ideals, its significance as a tangible symbol of nineteenth-century national philosophy and its place in the larger narrative of American modernity and progress.â€ â€” The Canadian Geographer

â€œThis is an assessment of a brief moment of nationwide prominence and the persisting realities of the meaning of change for not only Lockport, but for every community.â€ â€” CHOICE

â€œIn this sagacious and thought-provoking study, McGreevy explores the multiple meanings of a once-renowned and significant American place experiencing the profound changes of industrialism and the onrushing market economy.â€ â€” Edward K. Muller, University of Pittsburgh

Country	USA
Author	Patrick McGreevy
Binding	Paperback
EAN	9781438425283
Edition	Reprint
ISBN	1438425287
Label	State University of New York Press
Manufacturer	State University of New York Press
NumberOfItems	1
NumberOfPages	326
PublicationDate	2015-07-02
Publisher	State University of New York Press
Studio	State University of New York Press
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

Stairway to Empire: Lockport, the Erie Canal, and the Shaping of America (Excelsior Editions)

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