Newkirk Viaduct Monument
2018 photo
|
|
| Coordinates | 39°56′24″N 75°12′23″W / 39.9400°N 75.2063°WCoordinates: 39°56′24″N 75°12′23″W / 39.9400°N 75.2063°W |
|---|---|
| Location | West Philadelphia |
| Designer | Thomas Ustick Walter |
| Type | obelisk |
| Material | white marble |
| Width | 5 feet (1.5 m) |
| Height | 14 feet (4.3 m) |
| Completion date | 1839 |
| Dedicated to | Matthew Newkirk |
| Moved from original location sometime after 1927. Moved to current location in 2016. | |
The Newkirk Viaduct Monument (also, Newkirk Monument) is a 15-foot white marble obelisk in the West Philadelphia neighborhood of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Installed in 1839, it is inscribed with the names of 51 railroad builders and executives, among other information.
Designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, a future Architect of the Capitol, the monument was erected by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad to mark its completion of a Schuylkill River bridge and the first railroad line south from Philadelphia. The monument, which originally sat about 700 feet from the riverbank, was moved sometime after 1927 about 600 feet further inland, where it sat for decades by the main line that became Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. In 2016, it was moved to its present location, about 100 feet from the river's edge at the north end of the Bartram's Mile section of the Schuylkill River Trail.
The monument commemorates the 1838 completion of the Newkirk Viaduct, also called the Gray's Ferry Bridge, over the Schuylkill River. The bridge completed the first direct rail line between Philadelphia and Baltimore, Maryland — tracks that closely paralled the King's Highway, the main land route to the southern states.
On Aug. 14, 1838, the PW&B board of directors decided to name the bridge after company president Matthew Newkirk (1794-1868), a Philadelphia business and civic leader, and to commission a monument at its west end. (Earlier in the year, the company gave Newkirk a silver plate worth $1,000 ($22,981 today) to reward him for arranging the merger of four railroads that together built the Philadelphia-Baltimore line.)
...
Wikipedia