Charles Turner, Opening the Erie Canal, 1905, oil on canvas, DeWitt Clinton High School, Bronx​​

Charles Yardley Turner’s lyric mural “The Opening of the Erie Canal” is the first artwork officially commissioned by the NYC Board of Education for the Dewitt Clinton High School in 1905. Turner celebrates the namesake of the school by illustrating the pivotal role New York Governor, Dewitt Clinton, played in the historic opening of the Erie Canal.

One of the most ambitious engineering projects of the nineteenth century, the Eric Canal provided overland water transportation between the Hudson River and Lake Erie. Popularly known as “Clinton’s Folly,” the eight-year construction project was the vision of Governor Clinton, who convinced the NY State legislature to commit seven million dollars to the construction of a 363-mile ditch, forty feet wide and four feet deep.

In this diptych, Yardley documents the opening of the canal by picturing two celebrations that occurred between October 26 and November 4th, 1825. In “Entering the Mohawk Valley,” we see Clinton and his party aboard the packet boat “Seneca Chief,” as they embark on the eight-day journey from Buffalo to New York City with two wooden barrels of Lake Erie Water. In “Marriage of the Waters” they have arrived, and we see Clinton ceremoniously pouring water from Lake Eric into the Atlantic Ocean.

The two elegant murals once graced the auditorium of the original Dewitt Clinton High School at Tenth Avenue and 58th Street (now John Jay College). When the school moved to its present location in the Bronx, the murals were given a prominent position in the spacious library.