A Guide to Senior Care Options in Niagara County: Lockport, Niagara Falls, and North Tonawanda

Niagara County's senior care landscape spans Lockport, Niagara Falls, and North Tonawanda, each with a distinct set of verified options. Here's how the county's assisted living, memory care, nursing, and hospice choices actually compare.

By the Buffalo Senior Advisor Care Team · November 26, 2026

Niagara County's Geography: Two Anchor Cities, Not One

Niagara County, home to 212,666 people as of the 2020 Census, doesn't have a single dominant hub the way Erie County has Buffalo. Instead it's anchored by two distinct cities: Niagara Falls, a tourism-driven legacy industrial city, and Lockport, the county seat and an Erie Canal-era small city. North Tonawanda, along the Niagara River, rounds out the county's third significant population center — and is easy to confuse with the similarly named City of Tonawanda and Village of Kenmore, both of which are actually across the river in Erie County.

This geography means a Niagara County family's search often spans real driving distance between towns, more so than the denser clusters found in parts of Erie County. This guide walks through verified options in each of the three areas.

Lockport: The County Seat's Deep Bench of Options

Lockport has the widest concentration of verified senior care options in Niagara County. Briarwood Manor, at 1001 Lincoln Avenue, is a third-generation, family-owned business that has operated continuously since 1982 — over 40 years under the same family ownership, unusually long-tenured for a market where several sibling facilities have changed hands or rebranded. It offers both assisted living and memory care, and the operator notes a large lounge with a ceiling-mounted theater screen for group movie viewing.

Mount View Assisted Living, at 5465 Upper Mountain Road, is a newly renovated, 150-capacity Assisted Living Program housed in a building with a genuinely unusual history — it has served Niagara County since 1917, moving from one of the country's first tuberculosis hospitals through a period as Mount View Health Facility before becoming its current assisted-living use. Its ALP certification means eligible residents may be able to apply Medicaid toward services there.

Heritage Manor of Lockport, operated by DePaul at 41 Lexington Court, is a licensed adult home with all-inclusive rates and no entrance fees. As a DePaul property, it shares a parent organization with Glenwell in Cheektowaga (Erie County), which can give Erie/Niagara families a single point of contact across both counties if family members live on different sides of the county line.

Lockport: Skilled Nursing, Rehab, and Hospice

For skilled nursing needs, Elderwood at Lockport, a 126-bed facility near the historic Erie Canal "Flight of Five" locks, offers Elderwood's structured "Seasons Memory Care" program run inside a skilled nursing setting — appropriate for residents whose dementia-related needs exceed what assisted-living-level memory care can safely manage. Newfane Rehabilitation and Health Care Center, at 2709 Transit Road, uses a multidisciplinary "community approach" care model with specialty programs including respiratory/trach care and wound care, plus an operator-published door-to-door shuttle service for appointments and outings.

For end-of-life care, Niagara Hospice, at 4675 Sunset Drive, has served Niagara County families since 1988 and operates its own inpatient Niagara Hospice House on-site — the operator states it is the only ACHC-accredited hospice in Western New York, an accreditation distinct from state licensure. Having its own inpatient hospice house, rather than only in-home hospice, gives families an option when home-based hospice care is no longer manageable.

Niagara Falls: Hospital-Affiliated Care and Specialty Rehab

Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center is the anchor hospital for Niagara County, and it operates its own on-site skilled nursing facility directly: Schoellkopf Health Center, at 621 Tenth Street. Being hospital-affiliated can simplify discharge planning for a patient moving directly from Niagara Falls Memorial into skilled nursing care, though families should confirm current admissions criteria directly with the hospital's care coordination team, since hospital-affiliated units sometimes prioritize their own discharging patients over outside referrals.

Niagara Rehabilitation & Nursing Center, at 822 Cedar Avenue, is a separate skilled nursing and rehabilitation facility using Anodyne (infrared light) therapy for circulation and pain relief, and the operator states it staffs professional sports trainers for daily exercise programming aimed at residents who no longer qualify for formal rehab but still benefit from structured activity — worth asking about directly for a resident with chronic pain or circulation issues.

North Tonawanda: A County Line That Confuses Families

North Tonawanda sits in Niagara County, directly across the Niagara River from the City of Tonawanda and Village of Kenmore, both in Erie County — an easy mix-up given how close together these communities sit. Elderwood at Wheatfield, at 2600 Niagara Falls Boulevard, is a 123-bed skilled nursing facility on a campus that also includes Elderwood's own independent and assisted living communities, with a fully modernized therapy suite for physical, occupational, and speech therapy on site.

Northgate Health Care Facility, at 7264 Nash Road in North Tonawanda, is a 200-bed facility operated by The McGuire Group with a dedicated hospice unit and an on-site partnership with Niagara Hospice, allowing end-of-life care without transferring a resident elsewhere. The operator states it's one of the first and only New York facilities approved for in-facility blood transfusions, plus an in-house five-day "gentle dialysis" protocol — higher-acuity services than most skilled nursing facilities in the metro offer, worth knowing about for a resident with more complex medical needs.

Aging Services and the Ombudsman for Niagara County Families

Niagara County has its own Office for the Aging, separate from Erie County's Department of Senior Services, serving Niagara Falls, Lockport, North Tonawanda, and the county's more rural northern towns. Families should confirm its current phone number and street address directly through New York State's local-office directory at aging.ny.gov, since Niagara's specific contact details weren't independently re-verified for this guide.

One thing that doesn't change based on county: the Region 15 Long Term Care Ombudsman Program, operated by People Inc., covers both Erie and Niagara counties (plus Cattaraugus and Chautauqua) as a single region, reachable at (716) 817-9222. A Lockport or Niagara Falls resident of any of the facilities in this guide calls the exact same independent advocate as a resident in Buffalo.

Choosing Between These Options

For general assisted living with memory care available, Briarwood Manor's four-decade family-owned track record and Mount View's ALP certification and historic building are worth comparing directly, particularly if Medicaid eligibility for services is part of the family's planning. For skilled nursing needs, Elderwood at Lockport's Seasons Memory Care program, Elderwood at Wheatfield's therapy suite, and Northgate's higher-acuity specialty services (blood transfusions, gentle dialysis) each fit a somewhat different clinical need — ask directly which specialty services actually match your family member's condition.

For hospice care specifically, Niagara Hospice's own inpatient hospice house and ACHC accreditation, and Northgate's on-site hospice partnership with that same organization, both offer a path to end-of-life care that doesn't require transferring a resident to an entirely unfamiliar organization at a difficult time.

A Note on Verifying Anything Before You Decide

Before touring or committing to any Niagara County community, confirm current license status and inspection history at profiles.health.ny.gov/acf, and for the skilled nursing facilities named here, cross-check their federal quality rating on Medicare Care Compare (medicare.gov/care-compare). Ask each community directly about SNALR certification if memory care is part of your plan, since New York does not require every program marketed as memory care to hold that specific state certification — a detail covered in depth in our state rules guide.

For families weighing whether to search in Niagara County at all versus Erie County, our Erie vs. Niagara County guide covers how the two counties differ administratively, even though families frequently cross the line to tour communities in either direction.

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