Allyn Hess Perry sits in her living room in Wayne County, about two miles outside of Lyons. From her recliner, she gazes at a mirror on the windowsill that reflects picturesque views of the Erie Canal just yards away in her backyard.
“I put this mirror up so when I’m watching TV I can see if anyone’s going by,” said Perry, 86. “If someone’s out there, I’ll stand by the window to wave. I also keep an eye out for birds — there’s always so much to see.”
The two-story red brick building, constructed in 1855 along the original Erie Canal, has stood for 170 years. It has been a home, a store, a saloon and a beloved community landmark. Perry has lived here her whole life. Her mother, Marie Perry, bought the house in 1943 for $1,000 and raised her three children there while her husband, Lester, was in the Army.
Perry recalls playing in the nearby woods, doing yard work alongside her father and discovering canal artifacts. Walking along the towpath, built from limestone and hydraulic cement dating back to 1842, Perry lowers the glasses perched on her hairline and puts them on. “My brother and I carved our names here somewhere,” she said, brushing grass clippings from the ridge. “I’ve seen it before, but it’s faded now — there it is.” Words etched into the dark rock read ALLYN HESS CARL 1950.
Each year during the winter months, the New York State Canal Corporation drains the canal for annual maintenance, leaving water levels so low that any remaining water quickly freezes over. The artificial river would freeze, halting travel and shipping for the season. Perry remembers shoveling snow off the frozen waters to ice skate and explore with her brothers.
Perry’s childhood home was once a well-known stop along the canal, located on Erie Canal Lock No. 56. Locals called it the “Poorhouse Lock” because of the county poorhouse located across the street, where people worked on the farm in exchange for housing. The farm provided the local communities with clover, hay and wheat.
Construction of Lock E-56 began on the outskirts of Lyons in 1842 and was completed in 1849. The Poorhouse Lock is one of the few remaining enlarged locks on the canal system still holding water.
Carpenter Horace Wescott, who moved to Lyons with his parents when he was 4, operated the Poorhouse Grocery out of the first level of the building, offering goods to travelers and canallers passing through on their journeys.
In a 1938 newspaper article for the Lyons Republican, Wescott’s daughter, Nora Wescott Struder, wrote about the “good line of groceries” available in her father’s store: “In canal stores, many things were kept which were not found in other stores. The wooden ware consisted of horse bridges, the lumber for these was spruce and shipped from north of Rome by boat most of the way. There were only a few made at other places.”
The Poorhouse Lock closed after its section of the Erie Canal was abandoned in 1918, when the expanded Barge Canal opened along a different route. The store was converted into a private residence.
Today, the entryway to Perry’s home has been transformed into a carefully curated museum commemorating the local history of the Erie Canal and the Poorhouse Lock. The walls are decorated with local artwork, photographs and newspaper clippings related to the Erie Canal.
“I call this my mini-museum. This is all my personal collection,” Perry said.
She has binders full of family photo albums and historical information. One artifact Perry has on display is a piece she initially mistook for an iron horseshoe. “About 10 years after I found it, someone came through here and said, ‘That’s not a horseshoe. It’s a mule shoe from the Canal.’”
The Poorhouse Grocery also had an attached shed, believed by historians to have housed mules that worked along the original Canal pulling boats along the towpath.
From her front porch, Perry waves to passing boaters and hikers. She keeps an eye out for the resident snapping turtles that inhabit the old Erie Canal and the more than 300 bird species of Wayne County. The legacy of the Canal endures, attracting visitors who immerse themselves in nature while hiking or biking the nearby Empire State Canalway Trail and the Enlarged Erie Canal Lock 56 Trail.
“I see when people come by, and I wave them over. I don’t ask for anything, I just want to share. You’re not going to leave within half an hour,” Perry joked.
In 2020, the William G. Pomeroy Foundation installed the Canal Store historical marker along Hess’s property. The nonprofit installs signage at historical sites across the country, with 248 markers in Central New York.
