The foot of Amherst Street is best known as the site where British troops landed in 1813 to burn the villages of Black Rock and Buffalo. In 1899, when this photograph was taken, it was the location of passenger docks for the ferry to Grand Island. The bridge over the Erie Canal is visible in the distance, as is the tower of St. John’s Evangelical Church, while the Niagara River is in the foreground.

The Grand Island ferry was one of a few excursion boats which ran during only the summer months—another was at the foot of Main Street to Fort Erie, and the other from the foot of Hertel to the hamlets of Bridgeburg and Victoria. Amherst Street now ends at the I-190, built atop the Erie Canal and dividing Black Rock from the Niagara River.