E33 Rochester

Lock E33 is a threshold in more ways than one. It lifts boats 25.1 feet and marks the last lock before the “Long Level” — some 64 miles of canal running west to Lockport without a single lock, the longest lock-free stretch on the whole system. It is also where the modern canal turns its back on the city it made. The Barge Canal, rebuilt in the early 1900s, was routed south of downtown Rochester, crossing the Genesee River in Genesee Valley Park; the original 1825 canal ran straight through the center, carried over the river on a great stone aqueduct. That 1842 aqueduct survives downtown as the Broad Street Bridge — which later hid the abandoned Rochester Subway inside its arches, a canal turned railway turned ruin.