In 1807, the first trial of Robert Fulton’s steamship, the Clermont, ran on the Hudson River. Because steamboats could easily travel upstream as well as down, they would soon transform the use of American rivers and become the dominant engine of inland water transportation. In 1808, Gallatin gave a prescient “Report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals” to the U.S. Senate, proposing that the federal government fund the construction of systems of turnpikes and canals, as had been done in Europe: “Good roads and canals, will shorten distances, facilitate commercial and personal intercourse, and unite by a still more intimate community of interests, the most remote quarters of the United States. No other single operation, within the power of government, can more effectually tend to strengthen and perpetuate that union, which secures external independence, domestic peace, and internal liberty.”5

Despite opposition from anti-Federalists, who were against expanding the government’s power, work was begun on the first federally funded national turnpike in 1811. While Gallatin’s proposal for a canal system was deemed too expensive, it did inspire later, state-financed endeavors to facilitate inland waterway navigation, most notably the Erie Canal. Built between 1817 and 1825, the Erie Canal extended from Albany to Buffalo and, via the Hudson River, connected New York City, the country’s busiest port, to the western interior (Fig. 3). It lowered the cost of transporting goods and created reciprocal markets: agricultural products from the interior reached the cities, and manufactured goods from cities were purchased in rural areas. The canal also fostered population growth in places that had been sparsely settled, bringing diversity and greatly increasing the availability of goods and services. Both town and country experienced significant economic growth.

The success of the Erie Canal set off a boom in canal building during the 1820s. Most were financed by states or by a combination of state and private effort, and canal building became a symbol of American accomplishment. Philadelphia brothers William and Maurice Wurts believed that anthracite coal, which had been discovered in northeastern Pennsylvania in 1790, could be a better source of heat than wood, but it was difficult to transport from the coalfields to city markets. Inspired by the completion of the Erie Canal, they proposed building a gravity railroad to bring the hard coal over the Moosic Mountains and then building a canal from Honesdale, Pennsylvania, to Kingston, New York. From there, it could be shipped down the Hudson River to New York City. The route of the canal would roughly follow that of the Old Mine Road. In 1823, the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company (D&H) was incorporated, and in 1825, when the Wurts brothers demonstrated the ability of anthracite coal to heat a Wall Street coffee house, $1 million in stock offerings were sold to investors the same day.

In 1826, construction began on the canal. Stephen St. John’s land was midway along the path of the proposed canal, at the confluence of the Delaware and Neversink Rivers, near the point where Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York meet (Fig. 4).6 The D&H negotiated a right-of-way through St. John’s property in 1826 and purchased a portion of his land. He became the toll collector on this section of the canal and one of D&H’s most important employees. St. John transformed his home into a hotel for the workers and engineers building the Delaware and Hudson Canal. The chief engineer, John B. Jervis, is said to have had a secondary headquarters in the hotel, and he developed a long-lasting friendship with St. John.7 The canal was finished and opened in 1829. The hotel was in operation at least through that date and probably longer, providing lodging for the crews of the barges.

Although it is not known who owned the sign after St. John moved out of the Old Stone House in 1836, it seems likely it remained in the family throughout the nineteenth century. St. John’s granddaughter married Dr. William L. Cuddeback (1854–1931), who initiated efforts to develop the Minisink Valley Historical Society in the former hotel building, and his son Edgar (1882–1944) donated the sign to the society.9 In 1993, the Minisink Valley Historical Society sold the sign to help fund replacement of the structure’s deteriorated roof. It remains in private hands today.10

Unlike most surviving eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American trade signs, the Canal Hotel sign was used by a single owner, pictured a specific house and location, and was hung outside for a limited period, from around 1826 until 1836, when St. John relocated. The sign’s original surface is undoubtedly attributable to this restricted usage and limited exposure to the elements.

The sign’s imagery is not generic, as is the case with most other early American tavern and inn signs. As Nancy Finlay writes in Lions & Eagles & Bulls: Early American Tavern and Inn Signs from the Connecticut Historical Society, whose title emphasizes the point, “Although the repertory increased somewhat in the early nineteenth-century, most imagery continued to conform to a few defined types: animals, drinking symbols, famous men, and coats of arms” (Figs. 6, 7).11 In addition, most late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American trade signs were reworked and overpainted by subsequent owners, either by someone who inherited the family business or, if the business was sold, by a new proprietor. Frequently, signs were taken to new locations (Fig. 8).12 “Although American signs rarely matched the elaboration of lavish English examples,” according to Susan P. Schoelwer, “they were similarly composite art forms, uniting distinct crafts of painting, woodworking, carving, and metal-smithing.”13 The Canal Hotel sign’s gilded and paint-decorated central image, which is the same on both sides, is surrounded by a black frame molding, set within an architectural structure with pinned mortise-and-tenon rails and turned posts. Both sides are identical in form and composition, allowing the same image and lettering to be seen by travelers coming from either direction.14

The painted image depicts the stone house, which had a rear addition and front-facing multipaned windows. This is the earliest known likeness of the structure, which has stood on the site since 1793. With flattened perspective, the panel displays a well-rendered tableau of the original hotel situated among fruit trees, farmland, and pastures. The house is set off by a picket fence, and a path leads from it to a canal with a horse-drawn barge. Mount William, a prominent feature of the landscape in Port Jervis, rises behind the canal (Fig. 9). Thick block letters at the bottom of the sign spell out “S, ST JOHN.” Under the “T” of “ST” is the three-link chain of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (Fig. 10), symbolizing Friendship, Love, and Truth, suggesting the hotel was a meeting place for the fraternity, whose first North American lodge had been founded in 1819. 15

The highly reflective quality of the bold gilt letters on the dark smalt background would have illuminated the sign in the lantern lights of passing coaches. Smalt, which is crushed, ground glass colored blue with cobalt, had been used for centuries as a substitute for the expensive blue pigment lapis lazuli. Numerous early recipes for the preparation of smalt are known, but they all mention mixing zaffre, a deep blue pigment obtained by roasting cobalt ore, with sand and potash.16 Because it is a glass, smalt is transparent unless colored, and its vitreous particles are highly reflective. However, as particles of smalt are ground finer, their reflective quality is lost and color saturation lowered, so the compound was left fairly coarse.

The technique of applying smalt, which is known as “strewing,” required considerable skill and patience. After construction and painting of the image, the sign would have laid flat while a liquid adhesive was applied, and after it had dried sufficiently, smalt was sprinkled over it, little by little, and allowed to settle until it built into a solid layer. When the smalt had thoroughly dried, which could take a day or two, the sign would have been turned upright, with any excess falling off. Since the same process was used on both sides, adding lettering to a sign like the Canal Hotel’s was a lengthy endeavor.

The Canal Hotel sign is possibly the earliest extant example of a smalt-strewn sign, a type that proliferated later in the nineteenth century, when they were produced by specialized sign shops. As early as the eighteenth century, professional sign makers advertised their use of smalt as a durable, textured background to set off the gilded lettering. The use of smalt and gilding on the Canal Hotel sign probably followed the method of sign making documented in these early American advertisements. Colonial signs were made by jack-of-all-trades artisans whose business encompassed painting tavern signs, fire buckets, coach doors, theatre scenery, and house decorations (Fig. 11).17 Smalt was one of the pigments sold to artisans by “colourmen,” druggists who also sold art supplies. This pattern of decorative painters purchasing goods from colourmen, and working closely with the building and furniture making trades as “finishers” or “grainers” continued after the Revolution. The painters were often self-taught, but an apprentice system did develop in the late eighteenth century.

St. John apparently had work done on the Old Stone House before he opened it to the public, and his workers may have made or helped in the making of the sign. A 1981 structural evaluation of the building discovered considerable updating in the Federal style with installation of plaster ceilings, marble mantelpieces, new doors, and wood sheathing that was still intact. It is possible that the carpenters who worked on the house constructed the sign, and the sign’s painter could have worked with them as a decorative painter or “finisher.”18

The architectural frame of the sign consists of upper and lower rails, with the upper rail identifying CANAL HOTEL in black block lettering. Two turned vertical posts are topped by finials, with a third finial surmounting a stylized scrolled broken-arch motif. The tall, distinctive urn-shaped finials of the sign echo the decoration found on some early chairs from New York and New Jersey. In his article “Early New York turned Chairs: A Stoelendraaier’s Concept,” American furniture scholar Erik Gronning notes that “in the Netherlands, spindle-back chairs were typically made by a specific class of artisan that specialized in the production of turned seating.”19 A number of these Dutch turners and chairmakers, called drayers, had immigrated to New Amsterdam (from 1664 New York) by the mid-1650s. The silhouette of the finials is one of the distinctive features of their chair style (Figs. 12, 13). “Degraded versions of these finials appear on chairs made in New York and New Jersey as late as the twentieth century,” Gronning writes. “The lingering and geographic distribution of this design is directly related to the settlement and cultural history of New York.”20