Canton Viaduct
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| Canton Viaduct | |
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| Crosses | Canton River |
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| Locale | Canton, Massachusetts |
| Design | Stone arch viaduct |
| Total length | 615 feet |
| Width | 22 feet |
| Opening date | 1835 |
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Canton Viaduct is a stone viaduct that spans the Neponset River in Canton, Massachusetts. It was built in 1835 by Boston and Providence Railroad and was designed by Captain William Gibbs McNeill and Major George Washington Whistler, the father of well-known painter James Whistler.
The bridge resembles a giant stone wall, with a maximum height of 70 feet. The river passes through six small arches at the bottom of the bridge. The coping is supported by several segmental arches that join the tops of the buttresses. The structure is not one solid bridge, but is actually comprised of two parallel walls, each five feet thick, with a gap of five feet between the walls. After the bridge was originally built, a second track was added in 1860. In 1910, the roadbed was widened by adding cantilevering off of the main structure, and an opening was cut for a street in 1952. More recently, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority rehabilitated the bridge for Amtrak's high-speed Acela train service.
The bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the List of historic civil engineering landmarks.
[edit] References
- Canton Viaduct. Historic American Engineering Record. National Park Service. Retrieved on July 2, 2006.
- Plowden, David (2002). Bridges: The Spans of North America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company.
- Canton Viaduct. ASCE History and Heritage of Civil Engineering. Retrieved on July 3, 2006.
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