The Inauguration on November 28, 1850, led by King Oscar I and including two military orchestras, salutes, and cheering crowds, culminated as the king descended the dock, and was the last to leave it before the water was let in and the bridges were opened to the public. Ericson was made Commander of the Royal Order of Vasa and the city rewarded the engineer amply, while the supervisor of the project, de Geer, was made Knight of the same order. A model of the dock was displayed at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855 were Ericson received the silver medallion. The creation of the lock made it obvious the untidy surrounding area needed a facelift, and Ericson was therefore given the task of embellishing it. A paved space was added south of the lock, Karl Johans Torg, and the sculptor Bengt Erland Fogelberg (1786–1854) created an equestrian statue of Charles XIV John (1763–1844), carried out in Rome and cast in Munich in 1852. Ericson was raised to peerage at the unveiling ceremony November 4, 1854, which made him skipped the second s in his surname. The old canal was rebuilt into a fish sump with a bazaar added on top of it. The irregular waterfront running along Skeppsbron east and north of the lock, at the time still heaped with wooden hovel and other hardly representative structures, was unified 1852–1854 to a single, coherent quay 600 meters long, while Kornhamnstorg on the western side was furnished with a 45 meters long quay. Finally, Ericson also designed two of the drydocks on Beckholmen, still in use.