As you whiz toward Niagara Falls on the Robert Moses Parkway, just before the exit for downtown, if you look to your right you may catch a glimpse of a stone structure towering above the Parkway. Hidden but not obliterated by the Parkway, the stone chimney stands as testament to a time when this area was a raw frontier being contested by Native Americans, the French, the British and later, the Americans.

There is debate over when and who built the chimney and the structure it was first attached. Most histories credit the French with building a two-story structure in 1750 called “Fort du Portage” or “Little Fort Niagara” above the Falls at the end of the portage around the cataract. The location is now covered with industrial plants but was approximately across the Parkway from the water intakes on the Upper Niagara River. Recent research by local history and military scholars cast doubt on this and contend that the building at “Fort du Portage” was actually a one-story structure that would not have had a two-story chimney. In any case, the French vacated and burned the Fort in July 1759 as the British were advancing, leaving behind what some believe was the stone chimney. A year later the British returned to build their own Fort, Schlosser, in the vicinity of the former French fort. In addition to the Fort, the British built a two-story house for the “Portage Master,” John Stedman. It is believed by recent scholars that this is the chimney that is still in existence since it is a known fact that Stedman’s home had two stories. From here the story of the “old stone chimney” remains fairly consistent to the present.

Stedman, a Tory, left the home and went to Canada after the American Revolution. Another family occupied it for nearly twenty years, before Augustus Porter purchased it in 1806. In 1809 Porter leased out the home as a tavern until it was burned by the British in December 1813. A few years later another man built an inn around the chimney, but eventually the Porter family again acquired the structure and chimney. In 1840 General Peter B. Porter tore down the two-story inn and built a one-story home around the chimney. He sealed the second story fireplace opening. His son, Peter A. Porter, acquired the house in 1876 and tore it down in 1889. He then sold the property to the Niagara Falls Power Company in 1891. Eleven years later, with business and industry advancing toward the abandoned chimney, it was moved 150 feet away from the new power plants. In 1942 it was moved again to make way for more industry to power the war effort. This time it went to Porter Park on Buffalo Avenue near the Nabisco plant. In both cases, the stones were removed and numbered and the chimney was reconstructed to its original appearance.

Porter Park no longer exists and the chimney now sits on the property of the Carborundum plant. A plaque tells its long and unique history. It is overshadowed by the Robert Moses Parkway and the industrial complexes nearby, but it has not been completely forgotten by the people who care about its history and perhaps someday the “Old Stone Chimney” will have a place of honor again along the Upper Niagara River where it was first born.

Ann Marie Linnabery
Erie Canal Discover Center
24 Church St.
Lockport NY 14094
716.439.0431
CanalDiscovery@aol.com
www.NiagaraHistory.org