The first phase of the Jordan Outdoor Historical Gallery was installed Friday on North Main Street in the village, in preparation of the July 12 Erie Canal Celebration.
The 8 ft. by 28 ft. mural, painted and mounted on an exterior wall of the Bennett Conservatory for the Arts building depicts a historically accurate image of nineteenth century canal travel.
All of the structures portrayed in the painting – including what is now Jordan village hall – are actual buildings that stood in Jordan in the late 1800s, when the canal was among the most popular and convenient modes of travel and transport.
Benefactor Jean Carrington said the scenes in the mural were chosen to educate viewers on how the aqueduct functioned, how two boats ont he canal passed on another, and to depict how families traveling the canal coexisted with mules on the same boat.
The piece is the fourth collaboration between Weedsport-based artist Dawn Jordan and Carrington, whose family has a long history on the canal.
Carrington’s cousins, Irwin and Mildred, are among the faces in Jordan’s Port Byron mural; her grandfather is tending to mules in the newest image. Carrington herself even makes an appearance in another painting.
Jordan’s canal-themed murals, sponsored by Carrington, also hang in Port Byron, Phoenix and Weedsport and cover the second-floor walls of Camillus’ Erie Canal Park Sims Store.
Jordan’s next project will depict Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Clyde, NY.
A dedication of the Jordan mural will be held at 11 a.m. during the annual canal celebration.
