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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 the well-known painter, James McNeill Whistler.
The bridge resembles a giant stone wall, with a maximum height of 70 feet. The Canton River, a tributary of the Neponset River, passes through six small arches at the bottom of the bridge. A large waterfall comes from underneath the river, and a small stone bridge resembling the viaduct is further up, behind the viaduct, over the Canton River. 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 2006-07-02.
- 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 2006-07-03.
