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The Newkirk Viaduct Monument was erected in 1839 in present-day Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad to mark 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 $1,000 ($ 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 a 7-foot obelisk atop a 5-foot-square base inscribed with the names of the officials of the four companies.〔 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." In 1872, the PW&B built a new mainline west of the Viaduct, and leased its old line to the Reading Railroad, which expanded the old track to a small railyard.〔 In 1900, an article about the Viaduct's replacement noted the monument, and said, "On account of its inaccessibility and the dense foliage, it is scarcely ever seen." It was moved to its current location, along a right-of-way first laid in 1872, at some point after 1927.〔 Today, the monument is abandoned, in disrepair, and nearly forgotten. It sits on the north side of Amtrak's Northeast Corridor tracks just to the north of the 49th Street Bridge, visible from Amtrak trains and from SEPTA Regional Rail trains on the Airport Line and the Wilmington/Newark Line. ==Inscription== As transcribed by Wilson, the four sides of the monument and its base are inscribed as follows:〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Newkirk Viaduct Monument」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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