Leesport Lock House

Last updated
Leesport Lock House
Leesport Lock House during Flood of 2006.JPG
The Lock House during the flood of 2006.
Note the water behind the house from the Schuylkill River.
USA Pennsylvania location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Usa edcp location map.svg
Red pog.svg
Location27 E Wall St., Leesport, Pennsylvania
Coordinates 40°26′48″N75°58′4″W / 40.44667°N 75.96778°W / 40.44667; -75.96778 Coordinates: 40°26′48″N75°58′4″W / 40.44667°N 75.96778°W / 40.44667; -75.96778
Built1840
ArchitectLee, Samuel
Architectural styleEnglish Farm House
NRHP reference No. 77001123
Added to NRHPJune 09, 1977 [1]

The Leesport Lock House is a house accompanying a lock on the Schuylkill Canal in Leesport, Pennsylvania, USA. The house was built adjacent to the Leesport Locks #36 and #37 to allow canal barges to move quickly up and down the canal. The house was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 9, 1977. [2] The property was purchased in 1975 by a group of teachers and school directors from the Schuylkill Valley School District. They organized the Leesport Lockhouse Foundation. After paying the no interest mortgage, provided by The First National Bank of Leesport, they turned title to the property over to Berks County. The County purchased the neighboring car wash, built over a section of the locks, and transferred ownership to the Borough of Leesport. The property and programs are administered by the Leesport Lockhouse Foundation, Inc.

Contents

Location

The Lock House is located at 27 E Wall Street in Leesport, Pennsylvania, on the east side of the Schuylkill River. [3] Adjacent the Lock House a car wash stood for many years, situated on the foundation of the lock. The lock walls can still be seen just above the remaining portion of the lower lock.

The Lock House is across the street from the Union Fire Company #1 of Leesport and the ambulance station of the Schuylkill Valley EMS.

History

The Lock House was originally built in 1834 [4] by the Schuylkill Navigation Company. [5] The Schuylkill Navigation Company was chartered to build a series of navigation improvements in the Schuylkill River, allowing coal from the Coal Region to be delivered from Port Clinton to the ports in Philadelphia. The Schuylkill Navigation Company was the only means of carrying coal en-masse to Philadelphia for twenty years, until the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad was completed in 1841. Within only four years, the railroad was hauling three times the amount of coal as the Schuylkill Canal.

Although the canal continued to carry nearly two million tons of anthracite up through 1859, the Reading Railroad continued to transport more than the canal. In 1860, use of the canal started to decline. In 1869, a coal miners strike caused a shortage of material to be transported, a drought saw a severe drop in water levels in the canal, and severe flooding later damaged many portions of the canal. The Schuylkill Navigation Company struggled to find money to repair the damage, [6] until it was ultimately leased to the Reading Railroad in 1870. By 1890, traffic on the canal was carrying less than a tenth of the cargo as it had during its most prosperous years. [7]

However, the Lock House remained a symbol of economic growth in the Leesport area. Ultimately, both the canal and the railroad served to develop Leesport's economy.

Today

The Lock House and surrounding grounds have been restored to their 1880–1910 condition and are maintained by the Leesport Lock House Foundation. [8] The Lock House also hosts an annual Strawberry and Heritage Festival in early June.

Several relevant artifacts of the Lock House and other paraphernalia from the Schuylkill Canal can be found at the Hoss's Restaurant located just south of Leesport on the nearby Route 61.

See also

Related Research Articles

Leesport, Pennsylvania Borough in Pennsylvania, United States

Leesport is a borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 1,918 at the 2010 census.

Chesapeake & Delaware Canal United States historic place

The Chesapeake & Delaware Canal is a 14-mile (22.5 km)-long, 450-foot (137.2 m)-wide and 35-foot (10.7 m)-deep ship canal that connects the Delaware River with the Chesapeake Bay in the states of Delaware and Maryland in the United States.

Schuylkill River River in eastern Pennsylvania, United States

The Schuylkill River is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania, which was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal. Several of its tributaries drain major parts of the center-southern and easternmost Coal Regions in the state. It flows for 135 miles (217 km) from Pottsville to Philadelphia, where it joins the Delaware River as one of its largest tributaries.

Morris Canal Canal in New Jersey

The Morris Canal (1829–1924) was a 107-mile (172 km) common carrier anthracite coal canal across northern New Jersey in the United States that connected the two industrial canals at Easton, Pennsylvania, across the Delaware River from its western terminus at Phillipsburg, New Jersey, to New York Harbor and the New York City markets via its eastern terminals in Newark and on the Hudson River in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Tulpehocken Creek (Pennsylvania)

Tulpehocken Creek is a 39.5-mile-long (63.6 km) tributary of the Schuylkill River in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States, and during the American Canal Age, once provided nearly half the length of the Union Canal linking the port of Philadelphia, the largest American city and the other communities of Delaware Valley with the Susquehanna basin and the Pennsylvania Canal System connecting the Eastern seaboard to Lake Erie and the new settlements of the Northwest Territory via the Allegheny}, Monongahela. and Ohio Rivers at Pittsburgh.

Union Canal (Pennsylvania) United States historic place

The Union Canal was a towpath canal that existed in southeastern Pennsylvania in the United States during the 19th century. First proposed in 1690 to connect Philadelphia with the Susquehanna River, it ran approximately 82 mi from Middletown on the Susquehanna below Harrisburg to Reading on the Schuylkill River.

Main Line of Public Works United States historic place

The Main Line of Public Works was a package of legislation passed by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1826 to establish a means of transporting freight between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. It funded the construction of various long-proposed canal and road projects, mostly in southern Pennsylvania, that became a canal system and later added railroads. Built between 1826 and 1834, it established the Pennsylvania Canal System, the Allegheny Portage Railroad, and the Pennsylvania Canal System.

Schuylkill Canal

The Schuylkill Canal, or Schuylkill Navigation, was a system of interconnected canals and slack-water pools along the Schuylkill River in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, built as a commercial waterway in the early 19th-century. Chartered in 1815, the navigation opened in 1825 to provide transportation and water power. At the time, the river was the least expensive and most efficient method of transporting bulk cargo, and the eastern seaboard cities of the U.S. were experiencing an energy crisis due to deforestation. It fostered the mining of anthracite coal as the major source of industry between Pottsville and eastern markets. Along the tow-paths, mules pulled barges of coal from Port Carbon through the water gaps to Pottsville; locally to the port and markets of Philadelphia; and some then by ship or through additional New Jersey waterways, to New York City markets.

National Register of Historic Places listings in Pennsylvania Wikimedia list article

This is a list of properties and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Pennsylvania. As of 2015, there are over 3,000 listed sites in Pennsylvania. Sixty-six of the 67 counties in Pennsylvania have listings on the National Register; Cameron County is the only county without any sites listed.

Oaks is an unincorporated community located in Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 18 miles (30 km) northwest of Philadelphia. Its boundaries are defined in large part by the village's position at the junction of Perkiomen Creek and the Schuylkill River.

Pennsylvania Canal (Delaware Division) United States historic place

The Delaware Division of the Pennsylvania Canal, more commonly called the Delaware Canal, runs for 60 miles (97 km) parallel to the right bank of the Delaware River from the entry locks near the mouth of the Lehigh River and terminal end of the Lehigh Canal at Easton south to Bristol. At Easton, which today is the home of The National Canal Museum, the Delaware Canal also connected with the Morris Canal built to carry anthracite coal to energy starved New Jersey industries. Later, with a crossing-lock constructed at New Hope, the New Hope 'outlet lock' (1847) connected by Cable Ferry to enter at Lambertville, NJ; where it connected to a feeder navigation/canal that began at Bull's Island opposite Lumberville; which then ran over 22 miles (35 km) south along the New Jersey bank of the Delaware River through Trenton to Bordentown, the west end of the Delaware and Raritan Canal (1834) to New York City via New Brunswick. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania built the Delaware canal to feed anthracite stone coal to energy-hungry Philadelphia as part of its transportation infrastructure building plan known as the Main Line of Public Works—a legislative initiative creating a collection of self-reinforcing internal improvements to commercial transportation capabilities.

Lehigh Canal United States historic place

The Lehigh Canal or the Lehigh Navigation Canal is a navigable canal, beginning at the mouth of Nesquehoning Creek on the Lehigh River in eastern Pennsylvania in the United States. It was built in two sections over a span of twenty years, beginning in 1818. The lower section spanned the distance between Easton, Pennsylvania and present-day Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. In Easton, the canal met the Delaware and Morris Canals, which allowed goods to be transported further up the east coast. At its height, the Lehigh Canal was 72 miles (116 km) long.

Pennsylvania Canal

The Pennsylvania Canal was a complex system of transportation infrastructure improvements including canals, dams, locks, tow paths, aqueducts, and viaducts. The Canal and Works were constructed and assembled over several decades beginning in 1824, the year of the first enabling act and budget items. It should be understood the first use of any railway in North America was the year 1826, so the newspapers and the Pennsylvania Assembly of 1824 applied the term then to the proposed rights of way mainly for the canals of the Main Line of Public Works to be built across the southern part of Pennsylvania.

Fricks Locks Historic District United States historic place

Fricks Locks Historic District or more simply Frick's Lock is an abandoned village, along the also abandoned Schuylkill Canal, in the northeast portion of East Coventry Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania. This 18th-century village outlasted the canal, being abandoned in the late 20th century with the construction of the adjacent Limerick Nuclear Power Plant. The village on about 18 acres of land were listed as a historic district by the National Register of Historic Places in 2003. Frick's Locks is considered a modern ghost town and, although private property, attracts visitors.

Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company Defunct mining and transportation company

The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company was a mining and transportation company that operated from 1818 to 1964 in Pennsylvania, in the United States. It ultimately encompassed source industries, transport, and manufacturing, making it the first vertically integrated company in the United States.

Josiah White

Josiah White (1781–1850) was a Pennsylvania industrialist and key figure in the American Industrial Revolution.

Birdsboro station (Reading Railroad)

Birdsboro station can refer to three passenger railway stations in or near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania.

Canal Age Era of canal-building

The Canal Age is a term of art used by historians of Science, Technology, and Industry. Various parts of the world have had various canal ages; the main ones belong to civilizations, dynastic Empires of India, China, Southeast Asia, and mercantile Europe. Cultures make canals as they make other engineering works, and canals make cultures. They make industry, and until the era when steam locomotives attained high speeds and power, the canal was by far the fastest way to travel long distances quickly. Commercial canals generally had boatmen shifts that kept the barges moving behind mule teams 24 hours a day. Like many North American canals of the 1820s-1840s, the canal operating companies partnered with or founded short feeder railroads to connect to their sources or markets. Two good examples of this were funded by private enterprise:

  1. The Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company used vertically integrated mining raw materials, transporting them, manufacturing with them, and merchandising by building coal mines, the instrumental Lehigh Canal, and feeding their own iron goods manufacturing industries and assuaging the American Republic's first energy crisis by increasing coal production from 1820 onwards using the nation's second constructed railway, the Summit Hill and Mauch Chunk Railroad.
  2. The second coal road and canal system was inspired by LC&N's success. The Delaware and Hudson Canal and Delaware and Hudson Gravity Railroad. The LC&N operation was aimed at supplying the country's premier city, Philadelphia with much needed fuel. The D&H companies were founded purposefully to supply the explosively growing city of New York's energy needs.
Pennyfield Lock Lock on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in Travilah, Maryland, United States

The Pennyfield Lock and lockhouse are part of the 184.5-mile (296.9 km) Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that operated in the United States along the Potomac River from the 1830s through 1923. The lock, located at towpath mile-marker 19.7, is near River Road in Montgomery County, Maryland. The original lock house was built in 1830, and its lock was completed in 1831.

Swains Lock Lock on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal in Travilah, Maryland, United States

Swains Lock and lock house are part of the 184.5-mile (296.9 km) Chesapeake and Ohio Canal that operated in the United States along the Potomac River from the 1830s through 1923. It is located at towpath mile-marker 16.7 near Potomac, Maryland, and within the Travilah census-designated place in Montgomery County, Maryland. The lock and lock house were built in the early 1830s and began operating shortly thereafter.

References

  1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places . National Park Service. April 15, 2008.
  2. The Old Schuylkill Canal Association Website
  3. "The location of the Lock House on Google Maps". Google Maps.
  4. "The Leesport Lock House page at the Berks County Parks website".
  5. "Leesport Lock House at the Schuylkill River National and State Heritage website".
  6. The Waterway
  7. History of Schuylkill Navigation
  8. "Berks Parks: Leesport Lock House". www.co.berks.pa.us. Archived from the original on 2007-01-21.