In Lockport, Hiram Norton constructed the 100 foot square limestone Norton and Company Warehouse in 1848 to take advantage of the grain trade opened by the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The building served as a warehouse, general store, and living quarters, and canal boats pulled up along its west side, where an iron ring used to tie off boats waiting to load grain can still be seen. The scale house, part of the Norton grain warehouse operation, was used by local farmers to weigh grain as horses pulled loaded wagons onto the scale, received a weigh ticket, unloaded at the warehouse, and then had the empty wagon weighed so the ticket showed how much grain had been delivered for credit. The City of Lockport later donated limestone for benches that had been saved after the historic Seven Arch Bridge over the Des Plains River collapsed in 2011; Julius Scheibe was the probable builder of that bridge, which had been constructed from locally quarried limestone in 1869.