George B. Roberts

George Brooke Roberts (January 15, 1833 – January 30, 1897) was a civil engineer and the fifth president of the Pennsylvania Railroad (1880–96).

Born at Pencoyd, his family's ancestral farm in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, Roberts graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1849, and taught there for two years before becoming a rodman for the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR). From 1852 he worked for the Philadelphia & Erie Railroad, returning to the PRR in 1862 as assistant to the president, J. Edgar Thomson. Roberts oversaw the construction of bridges and other engineering work, including the Connecting Railway Bridge over Schuylkill River in Philadelphia (attributed to John A. Wilson, 1866–67) that connected PRR's southern and northern lines. He became a PRR vice-president in 1869, and succeeded Thomas A. Scott as PRR president in 1880.

As PRR First Vice-President, Roberts oversaw the construction of Broad Street Station, a seminal event in Philadelphia history. Before this, PRR locomotives did not cross the Schuylkill River, but deposited passengers at West Philadelphia Station (32nd Street) where horse-drawn streetcars brought them into Center City. Construction of a new bridge and a 10-block viaduct – the "Chinese Wall" – carried the PRR tracks two stories above street level and into the Wilson Brothers-designed station at Broad Street.

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