Gratwick

Gratwick began in the 1870s when William H. Gratwick bought 50 acres of desolate, wind-swept land along the upper Niagara River for his lumber business, a move away from the Erie Canal shipping center at Tonawanda Harbor that succeeded because of rail transportation. Lumber planing, storage, and shipping there grew so large that the New York Central Railroad built Gratwick Station at the remote site. Gratwick and his partners controlled every part of the lumber trade, owning thousands of acres of white pine forest in Michigan, logging and sawmill operations, and a fleet of large Great Lakes steamships that carried lumber to Gratwick. As the number of employees and their families grew, they formed a distinct community with small retail businesses, churches, a school, and a fire company across from the lumber yard. That community remained and was incorporated into the City of North Tonawanda in 1897, while the vast lumber piles later disappeared and the shoreline became Gratwick Riverside Park. William H. Gratwick had begun as a tally boy in a lumber yard, married the boss's daughter, and became a millionaire lumber baron. He spoke strongly against alcohol, prostitution, and government corruption, believed in civic involvement, and gave time and money to social, cultural, and health-related organizations throughout Western New York. After his death from colon cancer in 1899, his family gave $25,000 to Dr. Roswell Park, his personal physician, to build a laboratory devoted to cancer research that became Roswell Park Cancer Institute, and the family's generosity was later honored through the formation of The Gratwick Society to support the fight against cancer there.

North Tonawanda, New York · United States