Postcards from (Daniel) Webster Street

(Read time: 4 minutes)

“I still live.”
Daniel Webster, just before his death on October 24, 1852.

And so the famous lawyer, senator and orator does still live: not only in his many legendary speeches, but also in the name of North Tonawanda’s main downtown drag, “Webster Street” (whose drinking establishments, incidentally, the bibulous “Black Dan” would likely have enjoyed very much).

A friend of Stephen White

Tonawanda, or White’s Island (Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, 1853)

Daniel Webster visits this area several times in the 1830s as the guest of Stephen White, president of the East Boston Timber Company. Back east, Webster prosecuted the murder trial of White’s wealthy uncle, Captain Joseph White. The East Boston Timber Company is in Tonawanda to harvest the magnificent white oak stands of Grand Island and ship them back east on the canal for shipbuilding. White builds himself an impressive mansion on Tonawanda Island, and ferries local magnates and luminaries on and off for entertainments.

Romance also blossoms among the garden paths of the secluded, romantic island: Daniel Webster’s son Fletcher courts Stephen White’s daughter Caroline, and the couple later marry.

A train runs through it

A fascinating 1837 map with some streets and slips that probably only ever existed on paper. Some names–like Story Square, Sandusky, Curtis and Detroit Streets–would be replaced. Others–like Manhattan, Tremont, Marion and of course Webster Street–stick. From the Chart of Tonawanda Harbor, with villages of Tonawanda and Whitehaven (1837)

The settlement at Tonawanda is in its infancy when Daniel Webster is honored with his namesake street. In 1836 the tracks of the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad have just been laid on the east side of Webster. A wood-stoked steam locomotive–Erie County’s first–hauls passengers of the Buffalo and Niagara Falls Railroad between the titular city and precipitous natural wonder in about three hours. Just east across the tracks, closer to Sweeney Street, is William Vandervoort’s Niagara Hotel (the village’s first public house and stage coach headquarters from 1827. It will burn in 1844). Just south, Sweeney’s mill operates near the four-foot Tonawanda Creek dam. A few residences and businesses appear along the west side of Webster Street in the following decades, but it won’t be until the 1870s that the North Tonawanda downtown begins to assume the picturesque proportions we are familiar with today.

Postcards and views

C. 1915: View from Sweeney Street into downtown. At left, the imposing State National Bank. Third from left, the former Tonawanda Power Company headquarters is visible. Horse-drawn carriages still dominate the street, while a single early automobile rides along the tracks of the former Buffalo & Niagara Falls Railroad at right. At far right the 5-story Smith Real Estate & Exchange building looms.

C.1930: View from Tremont Street into downtown. The tracks on the east side of Webster have finally been removed, allowing for development of the opposite block (including the “Rivera” theater, as it was first named). Dead center may be seen the orange brick Lumber Exchange Bank at the northwest corner of Webster and Goundry (later the Webster Hotel).

C. 1955: View from Tonawanda into downtown. At left, the Bascule Bridge can be seen, which could opened to allow boats to pass, and its operator tower at center. at mid-right and lower right, in the canal, are the long-abandoned supports that carried trains across the creek and canal.

A friend of Stephen White

A train runs through it

Postcards and views

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