Matthew Newkirk

Matthew Newkirk (1794–1868), was a banker, railroad executive, and civic leader in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was a director of the United States Bank, but he was best known as the president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (PW&B), which in 1838 opened the first direct railroad link between Philadelphia and Baltimore, Maryland. He was also for many years the president of the Pennsylvania Temperance Society.

Newkirk was born May 31, 1794, the eighth of nine children, in Pittsgrove, New Jersey. At 16, he moved to Philadelphia to live with and work for Joseph and Collin Cooper, dry goods merchants. He volunteered for military service in the War of 1812 and left the service as a corporal.

In 1835, he bought 3,000 shares in the Wilmington and Susquehanna Railroad.

The same year, Newkirk bought a vacant lot at 13th and Arch Streets in downtown Philadelphia and built a mansion. Designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, it was built of marble and featured a fresco by Italian artist Nicola Monachesi.

Newkirk spent much of the 1830s leading efforts to raise money for and then build a rail line from Philadelphia south to the cities of Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore. In 1838, the PW&B began direct rail service between the cities, broken only by a ferry across the Susquehanna River. Among the line's achievements was the Newkirk Viaduct, the first permanent bridge across the Schuylkill south of Market Street, commemorated by the 1838 Newkirk Viaduct Monument. The right-of-way pioneered by the PW&B is still in use today by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.

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