The Newkirk Viaduct Monument (also, Newkirk Monument) is a 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, to honor the Newkirk Viaduct, the first permanent railroad bridge over the Schuykill River..
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 bridge across the Schuylkill River and the first railroad line south from Philadelphia. The monument, which originally sat about from the riverbank, was moved sometime after 1927 about 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 from the river's edge at the north end of the Bartram's Mile section of the Schuylkill River Trail.
History
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 paralleled the King's Highway, the main land route to the southern states.
On August 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 $1,000 ($ today) to reward him for arranging the merger of four railroads that together built the Philadelphia-Baltimore line.)
Designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, who would go on to design the dome of the U.S. Capitol, the white marble monument consists of seven pieces of carved stone held together simply by weight and friction — not reinforced, for example, with metal pins. The uppermost piece, a obelisk, weighs about , while the base and other pieces weigh a rough total of . The obelisk and base are inscribed with the names of 51 men, including senior officials of the four railroads and various employees who helped build the bridge and rail line.
The monument was installed along the western approach to the bridge and surrounded by a low iron fence. An 1895 account describes its location as "on a high bank in the angle formed by the junction of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad and the Chester Branch of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway just below the western end of the Gray's Ferry Bridge." It sat about from the Schuylkill River, at 39.93975 north latitude, 75.20830 west longitude.
In 1872, the PW&B built a new mainline west of the Viaduct. It leased its old line to the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, which built a small railyard, surrounding the monument.
After a half-century, the monument had fallen into obscurity, except perhaps to vandals. "Surrounding the structure is an iron fence to protect it from vandalism, but it has, nevertheless, been a frequent target for irresponsible hoodlums," the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote in 1896. In 1900, the Philadelphia Record wrote of the monument: "On account of its inaccessibility and the dense foliage, it is scarcely ever seen."
Ca. 1930 move
By January 1926, the Pennsylvania Railroad was making plans to move the monument "because of the additional yard facilities which are required at that point. The understanding is that it will be placed on the present site of the Gray's Ferry Station. The engineering department of the Pennsylvania Railroad has the matter in charge."
A May 1927 aerial photo shows it still in its original location. But presently, it was moved to the site of the now-demolished station, along the 1872 mainline, just northeast of the 49th Street Bridge, at 39.939492 north latitude, 75.210633 west longitude. It seems to have been moved by September 1930, when a reader asked the Inquirer about "a monument beside the Pennsylvania Railroad near the first overhead crossing which is located about Forty-Eighth or Fiftieth Street". (In 1939, a retired Pennsylvania Railroad employee—perhaps having forgotten the actual year of the move—told the Delaware County Daily Times that the monument had been moved in late 1917 to make way for the "Hog Island Railroad"—formally, the 60th Street Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad—and that three of Newkirk's daughters had been asked their permission for the move.)