Lock 32 in Pittsford, completed in 1916, was part of the third and final generation of locks built there and in New York State, replacing Enlarged Erie Lock 62 from the 1850s Enlargement that widened the original Clinton's Ditch locks. Unlike the hand-operated Enlargement-era locks, which measured 110 by 18 by 7 feet deep, Barge Canal Lock 32 used electric motors to move its gates and valves and measured 328 by 45 by 12 feet deep, allowing barges as large as 3000 tons to pass. In Pittsford, all three canal iterations followed a similar route until King's Bend, where Clinton's Ditch and the Enlarged Erie Canal turned sharply northwest through Rochester while the later Barge Canal headed west before rejoining the original route at the Junction Lock in Greece. Pittsford also became a shipbuilding center during the war effort from 1941 to 1945, when John H. "Cap" Odenbach, owner of Dolomite Product Corporation, developed electrically welded tank and cargo ships through the Dolomite Maritime Corporation and later Odenbach Shipbuilding Corp. Four 300-foot tankers, including Dolomite I, were built in Pittsford in an old section of the Erie Canal near French Road and floated down the canal to New York City, while larger production at Dewey Avenue on Lake Ontario produced 56 180-foot oil tankers intended for the D-Day armada.
