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Canton Viaduct

Canton, Massachusetts

Completed 1836

 

As one comes from Norwood, the bridge does form a lovely picture with its many arches through which flow the waters of the branch, thence falling over the dam below, and from the east the picture is also impressive.

- A History of the Viaduct,Canton Historical Society Web site

 

For more than 165 years, the Canton Viaduct has stood as a dominating structure on the New England landscape. When completed in 1836, the slightly curved, granite masonry bridge - 615 feet long, 70 feet high, and 22 feet wide - carried a single track of the Boston and Providence Railroad, providing a critical link in the establishment of rail service between Boston and New York. In 1860, a second track was added. With few major alterations, the viaduct has continued to provide safe rail transportation to heavier and faster loads throughout the 20th century.

 

Beginning in the early 1990s, the viaduct underwent a rehabilitation effort aimed at retaining its historic integrity while making it safe for modern, high-speed rail service. Following restoration, the viaduct has continued to serve as crucial transportation link into the 21st century, helping to provide 150 miles-per-hour, electrified, passenger rail service between Boston and Washington, D.C.

 

Facts

 

- The Canton Viaduct is believed to be the second oldest multiple-arch masonry viaduct in the United States. It contains 21 arches and was designed with hollow spaces between its walls, strengthened by solid buttresses above the arches.

- After a second track was added to the viaduct in 1860, its only alterations were the installation of iron cross-beams and railings in 1880; concrete reinforcing of the exterior arches in 1910; and the opening of an arch for street traffic in 1952.

- The viaduct's chief engineer was William Gibbs McNeill, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. His assistant was Major General George Washington Whistler, father of the well-known painter, James Whistler, who, it is said, became an artist in contradiction to his father's desire that he chose engineering as a profession.

For more information on civil engineering history, go to www.asce.org/history.

 

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Uploaded on August 19, 2008
Taken on August 19, 2008