When the Erie Canal opened in 1825, it was a triumph of human invention heralded from Buffalo to New York City. Cannons saluted passing boats. Fireworks and bonfires lighted the sky. And drinking, dancing and merrymaking overflowed its banks.
But in this trading city along the Mohawk River, there were no cannon salutes or fireworks. Schenectady officials feared the canal would allow barges to float by their city and take away their prosperous riverfront business, so it was left to the students from Union College to fire off their muskets in welcome.
Now, 175 years later, Union College is again making sure the Erie Canal is not forgotten with an ambitious retrospective of survey and engineering drawings, paintings, models and pottery at its campus in downtown Schenectady through Oct. 29. The college is also sponsoring a series of nine lectures, symposiums and concerts for the community, as well as trolley tours of local canal sites. And a banquet for state and local officials on Oct. 26 will showcase canal boats carved out of maple sugar and aqueducts made from New York cheddar cheese.
''Some might think we're overdoing it,'' said Roger H. Hull, the president of Union College, as he greeted 120 students and local residents who gathered here last Tuesday to hear folklore and music about the Erie Canal. ''In fact, we're simply making up for Schenectady's fatal mistake in 1825.''
It is difficult to overstate the importance of the man-made waterway that once linked Lake Erie to the Hudson River through 360 miles of bridges, aqueducts and locks that raised and lowered boats to adjust for changing elevations. Just 4 feet deep and 40 feet wide, it took eight years to build and was derided as a ''ditch'' by its opponents.
But when it was finished, the Erie Canal ushered in an era of trade and travel that transformed western New York. DeWitt Clinton, then the governor, personally made the inaugural trip on the canal with a barrel of Lake Erie water that he carried down the Hudson and poured into the Atlantic Ocean. Schenectady officials need not have worried, though, since the bustling canal traffic filled their warehouses with goods and brought more visitors to their banks. Local families made their living on the canal, steering tugboats and operating the locks in a tradition that was handed down from father to son. And the city thrived as a major transportation hub into the next century.
Although the Erie Canal was later enlarged to accommodate more barges, it was replaced in 1918 by a modern canal system that followed parts of its old route. That system, the New York State Barge Canal, is still in use. Today, Union College's celebration of the Erie Canal is belatedly drawing together residents and officials alike in this fading industrial city of 65,000 northwest of Albany. Mayor Al Jurczynski of Schenectady, for one, hopes to make amends for the earlier slight. ''I don't think history is destined to repeat itself as far as city fathers are concerned, at least not this city father, anyway,'' he said. And how did he explain Schenectady's long-ago mistake? The mayor was at a loss. ''My grandparents came over here 90 years ago from Poland,'' he said. ''I wasn't even part of the Schenectady scene then, not even in spirit. But I'm here now, I love Schenectady, and I'll try to correct the error of our ways.''
Unlike the city, Union College can proudly claim a long association with the Erie Canal. The private college, which has an enrollment of 2,042 students, was founded in 1795 by a group of Schenectady citizens. An 1830 graduate, Squire Whipple, designed many of the canal's bridges while still a student, and a Union professor, Jonathan Pearson, kept a diary of his trip on the canal in 1833 that is now part of the exhibit.
After Union started its engineering program in 1845, at least 30 more alumni oversaw or worked on the enlargement of the canal. But it is a legacy that some of its students know little about. In half a dozen interviews around campus last week, students had to struggle to remember the Erie Canal, let alone its importance to Union. ''Didn't it go from Albany to another place, a city maybe?'' asked Charles Tuthill, 20, who is majoring in French and political science. ''I don't know where.'' The Erie Canal exhibit, which opened on Sept. 4, fills two floors of the Nott Memorial, an ornate 16-sided atrium in the center of campus, and overflows into a gallery at the nearby Schenectady Museum. It took $40,000 and nearly 18 months for Union faculty and staff to assemble. No fewer than 125 artifacts are on loan from the college's permanent collection and a dozen cultural and historical institutions across the state.
The most valuable artifacts are 30 hand-drawn survey maps and engineering plans that have rarely, if ever, been seen outside the New York State Archives. Just to borrow them, the college had to order custom-made display cases that would shield the parchment from humidity and light.
Four Union professors and a dozen students labored over those engineering plans for 1,500 hours to recreate scaled-down versions of a lock, aqueduct and two bridges that are also on display. They had to redraw the plans on a computer and figure out how to cut the parts and fit them together.
Jeane Whittington, 20, a civil engineering major, said she learned so much about the Erie Canal in the process that she had lectured her parents about it and dragged 45 of her friends to see the models. ''I feel important,'' she said. ''I actually know what I'm talking about.''
Another conversation-stopper in the exhibit is a 1,200-pound marble tombstone with an intricate carving of a packet boat crossing an aqueduct. It once marked the grave of Luke Hitchcock, a stonemason who worked on the Erie Canal and died in 1860, but somehow found its way to the front lawn of the Madison County Historical Society. The college borrowed it for the exhibit. ''This was one of the fun things we were able to include,'' said Rachel Seligman, the exhibit's curator. ''And we did not — and I repeat, did not — remove it from the man's grave.''
Craig Williams, a curator at the New York State Museum and an expert on New York's canals, said the broad scope of the Union exhibit, along with authentic touches like the maps and tombstone, set it apart from other Erie Canal collections around the state. ''This is the real material,'' Mr. Williams said. ''Short of spending weeks walking along the towpath, I can't think of a better way to capture the spirit of the canal.''
By Union College's count, more than 5,000 people have seen the free exhibit and indulged in a bit of canal nostalgia at its community events. There has been a symposium on the design of the canal, a lecture on its social, cultural and economic impacts, and even a concert by George Ward, a folk singer whose 1982 album ''Oh! That Low Bridge!'' is devoted to the Erie Canal.
Union professors are also leading three tours of nearby canal sites for $10 a person. Sixty-six people have signed up, and 60 more are on the waiting list.
As canal lovers milled around the displays at the Nott Memorial on Tuesday night, they tittered at Mr. Hull's spirited recounting of how Union College students saved the day in 1825. Then they tapped their feet as a trio of folk artists regaled them with songs and jokes about the canal.
Tom Wadsworth, a folk musician from Cobleskill, N.Y., confided that he had been reading up on the Erie Canal ever since landing the unusual assignment. He ripped through a poem he had come across in a book: ''We're digging a ditch through the gravel, through the gravel and mud and slime by gawd, so the people in freight can travel, and the packets can move on time by
gawd.''
Not long after that, Mr. Wadsworth had nearly everyone singing along to that fourth-grade standard ''15 Miles on the Erie Canal.'' With a strum of his guitar, he started with, ''I've got a mule and her name is Sal, 15 miles on the Erie Canal. She's a good old worker, she's a good old pal . . .'' And the audience chimed in, ''15 miles on the Erie Canal.''
Marie Costello, 75, who married into a family with three generations of tugboat captains, knew those words by heart. And she even brought her own traveling exhibit of Erie Canal memorabilia — a tote bag crammed with 20 pounds of newspaper clippings, books, videotapes and photographs. ''Do you realize what the Erie Canal did for this community?'' she asked. ''It isn't possible for any of us to give you firsthand information about that. But I can tell you that it was our family's livelihood. Everything revolved around that work.''