1.
Fairmount Park
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Fairmount Park is the largest municipal park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the historic name for a group of parks located throughout the city. Fairmount Park consists of two sections named East Park and West Park, divided by the Schuylkill River, with the two sections together totalling 2,052 acres. Fairmount Park, Philadelphias first park, occupies 2,052 acres adjacent to the banks of the Schuylkill River, since 2010, Philadelphia Parks & Recreation divides the original park into East and West Fairmount parks. The South Garden predated the establishment of the Park Commission in 1867, while Lemon Hill, after the Civil War, work progressed on acquiring and laying out West Park. In the 1870s, the Fairmount Park Commission expropriated properties along the Wissahickon Creek to extend Fairmount Park, the Schuylkill River Trail is a modern paved multi-use trail by Kelly Drive in the East Park. The park grew out of the Lemon Hill estate of Henry Pratt, whose land was owned by Robert Morris. Purchased by the city in 1844, the estate was dedicated to the public by city ordinance on September 15,1855. A series of state and local legislative acts over the three years increased the holdings of the city. In 1858, the city held a competition to re-landscape Lemon Hill. As the site of the 1876 Centennial Exposition and the first zoo in the United States, the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park, located to the immediate northwest, was also included in the Fairmount Park NRHP registration document. The Art Association continues to commission and care for a number of sculptures, in coordination with the park. In 2007, the Art Association installed Iroquois by Mark di Suvero near the Philadelphia Museum of Art on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Mount Pleasant, built in 1761 in what was then the countryside outside of the city by a privateer, is administered by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Fairmount Park. The Art Museum also administers Cedar Grove, a house completed in 1750 in the Frankford neighborhood of the city, Sedgeley, a house built in 1799 on Lemon Hill, was abandoned and later demolished after being acquired through eminent domain by the city in 1857. The Sedgeley property also included a cottage constructed of stone which still exists. Philadelphia portal List of parks in Philadelphia Philadelphia Aquarium Subaru Cherry Blossom Festival of Greater Philadelphia Sedgley Woods Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club Fazio, Michael W
2.
Philadelphia
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In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia was one of the capitals in the Revolutionary War. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became an industrial center. It became a destination for African-Americans in the Great Migration. The areas many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational, with a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the center of activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, Philadelphia has more outdoor sculptures and murals than any other American city. Fairmount Park, when combined with the adjacent Wissahickon Valley Park in the watershed, is one of the largest contiguous urban park areas in the United States. The 67 National Historic Landmarks in the city helped account for the $10 billion generated by tourism, Philadelphia is the only World Heritage City in the United States. Before Europeans arrived, the Philadelphia area was home to the Lenape Indians in the village of Shackamaxon, the Lenape are a Native American tribe and First Nations band government. They are also called Delaware Indians and their territory was along the Delaware River watershed, western Long Island. Most Lenape were pushed out of their Delaware homeland during the 18th century by expanding European colonies, Lenape communities were weakened by newly introduced diseases, mainly smallpox, and violent conflict with Europeans. Iroquois people occasionally fought the Lenape, surviving Lenape moved west into the upper Ohio River basin. The American Revolutionary War and United States independence pushed them further west, in the 1860s, the United States government sent most Lenape remaining in the eastern United States to the Indian Territory under the Indian removal policy. In the 21st century, most Lenape now reside in the US state of Oklahoma, with communities living also in Wisconsin, Ontario. The Dutch considered the entire Delaware River valley to be part of their New Netherland colony, in 1638, Swedish settlers led by renegade Dutch established the colony of New Sweden at Fort Christina and quickly spread out in the valley. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their defeat of the English colony of Maryland
3.
Pennsylvania
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Pennsylvania /ˌpɛnsᵻlˈveɪnjə/, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle, Pennsylvania is the 33rd largest, the 5th most populous, and the 9th most densely populated of the 50 United States. The states five most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, the state capital, and its ninth-largest city, is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of shoreline along Lake Erie and the Delaware Estuary. The state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States, it came into being in 1681 as a result of a land grant to William Penn. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden and it was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12,1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the states largest city of Philadelphia, during the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg, was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washingtons headquarters during the winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west, of a total 46,055 square miles,44,817 square miles are land,490 square miles are inland waters, and 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie. It is the 33rd largest state in the United States, Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Cities include Philadelphia, Reading, Lebanon and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown, Bethlehem, the northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining communities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston City, and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest, the state has 5 regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau, Ridge and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain, Piedmont, and the Erie Plain. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the corner, has a humid continental climate. The largest city, Philadelphia, has characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware. Moving toward the interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increase. Western areas of the state, particularly locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, the Tuscarora Nation took up temporary residence in the central portion of Pennsylvania ca. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their lands in America
4.
Benjamin Franklin Parkway
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Benjamin Franklin Parkway is a scenic boulevard that runs through the cultural heart of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Named for favorite son Benjamin Franklin, the mile-long Parkway cuts diagonally across the grid pattern of Center Citys Northwest quadrant. It starts at Philadelphia City Hall, curves around Logan Circle, the Parkway is the spine of Philadelphias Museum District. From its northern end, the Parkway provides access to Fairmount Park through Kelly Drive, Martin Luther King Drive, the Schuylkill River Trail, the Parkway also is an outdoor sculpture garden. In a city famous for its planning, the Parkway represents one of the earliest examples of urban renewal in the United States. The road was constructed to ease heavy industrial congestion in Center City and to restore Philadelphias natural and artistic beauty, as part of the City Beautiful movement. The Association commissioned architects Horace Trumbauer, Clarence Zantzinger, and Paul Philippe Cret, construction on the Parkway did not begin until 1917, when French landscape architect Jacques Gréber submitted a revised plan to the Commissioners of Fairmount Park. Gréber designed the Parkway in 1917 to emulate the Champs-Élysées in Paris, the route was determined by an axis drawn from City Hall Tower to a fixed point on the hill that William Penn called Fairmount, now the site of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Champs-Élysées terminates at the Arc de Triomphe, and the Parkways terminating at the Art Museum gives the notion of a slice of Paris in Philadelphia, the Parkway also has an international flavor by being lined with flags of countries from around the world. The traffic rotary on the end of the Parkway, at the foot of the Art Museums Rocky Steps, is named Eakins Oval after Philadelphia painter Thomas Eakins. Because of its location, the Parkway is the site for many concerts. On July 2,2005, the steps of the museum played host to the Philadelphia venue of Live 8, the Parkway was also the site of Jay-Zs Made in America Festival on September 1-2,2012 featuring Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Skrillex and Calvin Harris, among others. Traffic along the Parkway has decreased considerably because of the completion of Interstate 676, in response, the roadway has been narrowed somewhat and the sidewalks expanded around Logan Circle. A new museum for the Barnes Foundation collection of Impressionist art on the site between the Free Library and the Rodin Museum opened in Spring 2012, Rocky Steps Cradle of Liberty Council Academy of Natural Sciences Jacques Gréber Kyriakodis, Harry. The Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Arcadia Publishing, Parkway Museums District Ben Franklin Parkway rehabilitation project The Philadelphia Museum of Art Center City Parks District - supports parks along the Parkway
5.
Thomas Eakins
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Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history and he painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, individually. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him, in the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, No less important in Eakins life was his work as a teacher. As an instructor he was an influential presence in American art. Eakins was a figure whose work received little by way of official recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-, Eakins was born and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He was the first child of Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, a woman of English and Dutch descent, and Benjamin Eakins, Benjamin Eakins grew up on a farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the son of a weaver. He was successful in his profession, and moved to Philadelphia in the early 1840s to raise his family. Thomas Eakins observed his father at work and by twelve demonstrated skill in precise line drawing, perspective, and he was an athletic child who enjoyed rowing, ice skating, swimming, wrestling, sailing, and gymnastics—activities he later painted and encouraged in his students. Eakins attended Central High School, the public school for applied science and arts in the city. He studied drawing and anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1861, for a while, he followed his fathers profession and was listed in city directories as a writing teacher. His scientific interest in the body led him to consider becoming a surgeon. Eakins then studied art in Europe from 1866 to 1870, notably in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme, being only the second American pupil of the French realist painter, famous as a master of Orientalism. He also attended the atelier of Léon Bonnat, a realist painter who emphasized anatomical preciseness, a method adapted by Eakins. A letter home to his father in 1868 made his aesthetic clear, She is the most beautiful thing there is in the world except a naked man, already at age 24, nudity and verity were linked with an unusual closeness in his mind. Yet his desire for truthfulness was more expansive, and the home to Philadelphia reveal a passion for realism that included, but was not limited to
6.
Parking lot
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A parking lot, also known as a car lot, is a cleared area that is intended for parking vehicles. Usually, the term refers to an area that has been provided with a durable or semi-durable surface. In most countries where cars are the dominant mode of transportation, parking lots are a feature of every city, shopping malls, sports stadiums, megachurches and similar venues often feature parking lots of immense area. Parking lots tend to be sources of pollution because of their extensive impervious surfaces. Most existing lots have limited or no facilities to control runoff, many areas today also require minimum landscaping in parking lots, which means that their paved surfaces contribute to heat islands. Many municipalities require a number of parking spaces, depending on the floor area in a store or the number of bedrooms in an apartment complex. In the United States, each states Department of Transportation sets the proper ratio for disabled spaces for private business, various forms of technology are used to charge motorists for the use of a parking lot. Modern parking lots use a variety of technologies to help motorists find unoccupied parking spaces, retrieve their vehicles, parking lots tend to be sources of water pollution because of their extensive impervious surfaces. Virtually all of the rain that falls becomes urban runoff, to avoid flooding and unsafe driving conditions, the lots are built to effectively channel and collect runoff. Parking lots, along roads, are often the principal source of water pollution in urban areas. Motor vehicles are a constant source of pollutants, the most significant being gasoline, motor oil, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, many parking lots are also significant sources of trash which ends up in waterways. Treatment of pollution, Traditionally, the runoff has been shunted directly into storm sewers, streams, however, most larger municipalities now require construction of stormwater management facilities for new lots. Typical facilities include retention basins, infiltration basins and percolation trenches, some newer designs include bioretention systems, which use plants more extensively to absorb and filter pollutants. However, most existing lots have limited or no facilities to control runoff, alternative paving materials, An alternative solution today is to use permeable paving surfaces, such as brick, pervious concrete, stone, special paving blocks, or tire-tread woven mats. These materials allow rain to soak into the ground through the spaces inherent in the parking lot surface. The ground then may become contaminated in the surface of the parking lot park, but this tends to stay in a area of ground. This can however create problems if contaminants seep into groundwater, especially there is groundwater abstraction downstream for potable water supply. Many areas today also require minimum landscaping in parking lots and this usually principally means the planting of trees to provide shade
7.
Philadelphia Register of Historic Places
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The Philadelphia Register of Historic Places is a register of historic places by the Philadelphia Historical Commission. Buildings, structures, sites, objects, interiors and districts can be added to the list, associated with an event of importance to the history of the City, Commonwealth or Nation. Reflects the environment in an era characterized by an architectural style. Embodies distinguishing characteristics of a style or engineering specimen. Contains elements of design, detail, materials or craftsmanship which represent a significant innovation, is part of or related to a square, park or other distinctive area which should be preserved according to a historic, cultural or architectural motif. Represents an established and familiar visual feature of the neighborhood, community or City, has yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in pre-history or history. Exemplifies the cultural, political, economic, social or historical heritage of the community, the lists below contain properties on the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places, Properties that do not have an official address as assigned by Philadelphias Office of Property Assessment
8.
American bison
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The American bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo or simply buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds. Bison were seen in North Carolina near Buffalo Ford on the Catawba River as late as 1750. Two subspecies or ecotypes have been described, the bison, smaller in size and with a more rounded hump. Furthermore, the bison has been suggested to consist of a northern. However, this is not supported. The wood bison is one of the largest wild species of bovid in the world, surpassed by only the Asian gaur and it is the largest extant land animal in the Americas. The American bison is the mammal of the United States. The term buffalo is considered to be a misnomer for this animal, and could be confused with true buffalos, the Asian water buffalo. The name buffalo is listed in dictionaries as an acceptable name for American buffalo or bison. In reference to animal, the term buffalo dates to 1625 in North American usage when the term was first recorded for the American mammal. It thus has a longer history than the term bison. The American bison is very related to the wisent or European bison. In Plains Indian languages in general, male and female buffaloes are distinguished, a bison has a shaggy, long, dark-brown winter coat, and a lighter-weight, lighter-brown summer coat. As is typical in ungulates, the bison is slightly larger than the female and, in some cases. Plains bison are often in the range of sizes. Head-and-body lengths range from 2 to 3.5 m long, shoulder heights in the species can range from 152 to 186 cm. Weights can range from 318 to 1,000 kg Mature bulls tend to be larger than cows. Cow weights have had reported medians of 450 to 495 kg, with one small sample averaging 479 kg, the heaviest wild bull ever recorded weighed 1,270 kg
9.
George Washington
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George Washington was an American politician and soldier who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He served as Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and he is popularly considered the driving force behind the nations establishment and came to be known as the father of the country, both during his lifetime and to this day. Washington was widely admired for his leadership qualities and was unanimously elected president by the Electoral College in the first two national elections. Washingtons incumbency established many precedents still in use today, such as the system, the inaugural address. His retirement from office two terms established a tradition that lasted until 1940 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term. The 22nd Amendment now limits the president to two elected terms and he was born into the provincial gentry of Colonial Virginia to a family of wealthy planters who owned tobacco plantations and slaves, which he inherited. In his youth, he became an officer in the colonial militia during the first stages of the French. In 1775, the Second Continental Congress commissioned him as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the American Revolution, in that command, Washington forced the British out of Boston in 1776 but was defeated and nearly captured later that year when he lost New York City. After crossing the Delaware River in the middle of winter, he defeated the British in two battles, retook New Jersey, and restored momentum to the Patriot cause and his strategy enabled Continental forces to capture two major British armies at Saratoga in 1777 and Yorktown in 1781. In battle, however, Washington was repeatedly outmaneuvered by British generals with larger armies, after victory had been finalized in 1783, Washington resigned as commander-in-chief rather than seize power, proving his opposition to dictatorship and his commitment to American republicanism. Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which devised a new form of government for the United States. Following his election as president in 1789, he worked to unify rival factions in the fledgling nation and he supported Alexander Hamiltons programs to satisfy all debts, federal and state, established a permanent seat of government, implemented an effective tax system, and created a national bank. In avoiding war with Great Britain, he guaranteed a decade of peace and profitable trade by securing the Jay Treaty in 1795 and he remained non-partisan, never joining the Federalist Party, although he largely supported its policies. Washingtons Farewell Address was a primer on civic virtue, warning against partisanship, sectionalism. He retired from the presidency in 1797, returning to his home, upon his death, Washington was eulogized as first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen by Representative Henry Lee III of Virginia. He was revered in life and in death, scholarly and public polling consistently ranks him among the top three presidents in American history and he has been depicted and remembered in monuments, public works, currency, and other dedications to the present day. He was born on February 11,1731, according to the Julian calendar, the Gregorian calendar was adopted within the British Empire in 1752, and it renders a birth date of February 22,1732. Washington was of primarily English gentry descent, especially from Sulgrave and his great-grandfather John Washington emigrated to Virginia in 1656 and began accumulating land and slaves, as did his son Lawrence and his grandson, Georges father Augustine
10.
Philadelphia City Hall
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Philadelphia City Hall, built in 1901 and located at 1 Penn Square, is the seat of government for the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The building was designed by Scottish-born architect John McArthur, Jr. in the Second Empire style, City Hall was topped off in 1894, although the interior wasnt finished until 1901. Designed to be the worlds tallest building, it was surpassed during construction by the Washington Monument, with almost 700 rooms, City Hall is the largest municipal building in the United States. The building houses three branches of government, playing host to the executive branch, its legislature. The statue is the tallest atop any building in the world, Calder wished the statue to face south so that its face would be lit by the sun most of the day, the better to reveal the details of his work. Beyond Penn Treaty Park is Pennsbury Manor, Penns country home in Bucks County, yet another version for why the statue pointed generally north instead of south is that it was the current architects method of showing displeasure with the style of the work. By 1894, the design was not in the current. Penns statue is hollow, and an access tunnel through it leads to a small hatch atop the hat. The abrogation of this agreement supposedly brought a curse onto local sports teams, during the 1990s, whenever one of Philadelphias four major sports teams was in contention for a championship, the statue was decorated with the jersey or hat of that team. Other architectural features and history The tower features clocks 8 m in diameter on all four sides of the portion of the tower. This clock was designed by Warren Johnson, City Halls observation deck is located directly below the base of the statue, about 152 m above street level. Once enclosed with chain link fence, the deck is now enclosed by glass. It is reached in a 6-person elevator whose glass panels allow visitors to see the wooden superstructure that supports the tower, stairs within the tower are only used for emergency exit. The ornamentation of the tower has been simplified, the huge garlands that festooned the top panels of the tower were removed, in the 1950s, the city fathers investigated tearing down City Hall for a new building elsewhere. They found that the demolition would have bankrupted the city due to the masonry construction. City Hall became a National Historic Landmark in 1976, in 2006, it was also named a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers. City Hall is a fully bearing masonry structure with walls up to 22 feet thick, the principal exterior materials are limestone, granite, and marble. City Hall is topped with a 37 foot tall statue of William Penn, City Hall was the tallest building in Pennsylvania from 1901 until 1932, when it was surpassed by the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh
11.
John Ericsson
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John Ericsson was a Swedish-American inventor, active in England and the United States, and regarded as one of the most influential mechanical engineers ever. Ericsson collaborated on the design of the steam locomotive Novelty, which competed in the Rainhill Trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, won by George Stephensons Rocket. In America he designed the US Navys first screw-propelled steam-frigate USS Princeton, in partnership with Captain Robert Stockton, a new partnership with Cornelius H. Johan Ericsson was born at Långban in Värmland, Sweden. He was the brother of Nils Ericson, a distinguished canal and their father Olaf Ericsson had worked as the supervisor for a mine in Värmland. He had lost money in speculation and had to move his family to Forsvik in 1810, there he worked as a director of blastings during the excavation of the Swedish Göta Canal. The extraordinary skills of the two Ericsson brothers were discovered by Baltzar von Platen, the architect of the Göta Canal and they were dubbed cadets of mechanics of the Swedish Royal Navy, and engaged as trainees at the canal enterprise. At the age of fourteen, John was already working independently as a surveyor and his assistant had to carry a footstool for him to reach the instruments during surveying work. At the age of seventeen he joined the Swedish army in Jämtland, serving in the Jämtland Field Ranger Regiment, as a Second Lieutenant, but was soon promoted to Lieutenant. He was sent to northern Sweden to do surveying, and in his time he constructed a heat engine which used the fumes from the fire instead of steam as a propellant. His skill and interest in mechanics made him resign from the army, however his heat engine was not a success, as his prototype was designed to burn birchwood and would not work well with coal. Notwithstanding the disappointment, he invented several other mechanisms instead based on steam, in 1829 he and John Braithwaite built Novelty for the Rainhill Trials arranged by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. It proved considerably faster than the other entrants but suffered recurring problems. Two further engines were built by Braithwaite and Ericsson, named William IV and Queen Adelaide after the new king and these were generally larger and more robust than Novelty and differed in several details. The pair ran trials on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway but the railway declined to purchase the new designs, an engine Ericsson constructed for Sir John Franklins use failed under the Antarctic conditions for which, out of Franklins desire to conceal his destination, it had not been designed. At this stage of Ercissons career the most successful and enduring of his inventions was the steam condenser and his deep sea lead, a pressure-activated fathometer was another minor, but enduring success. The commercial failure and development costs of some of the machines devised, at this time he also married 19-year-old Amelia Byam, a disastrous match that ended in the couples separation until Amelias death. His only formal education was an officers education and training during his time in the Swedish Army. On March 27,1822, John passed an examination in Stockholm
12.
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
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The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad is one of the oldest railroads in the United States and the first common carrier railroad. At first this railroad was located entirely in the state of Maryland with a line from the port of Baltimore west to Sandy Hook. At this point to continue westward, it had to cross into Virginia over the Potomac River, adjacent to the confluence of the Potomac, from there it was extended to the Ohio River at Wheeling and a few years later also to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It is now part of the CSX Transportation network, and includes the oldest operational railroad bridge in the USA, the B&O also included the Leiper Railroad, the first permanent horse-drawn railroad in the U. S. In later years, B&O advertising carried the motto, Linking 13 Great States with the Nation, the B&O Warehouse at the Camden Yards rail junction in Baltimore now dominates the view over the right-field wall at the Baltimore Orioles current home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards. At the end of 1970 B&O operated 5552 miles of road and 10449 miles of track, not including the Staten Island Rapid Transit or the Reading and its subsidiaries. The fast-growing port city of Baltimore, Maryland faced economic stagnation unless it opened routes to the western states, as New York had done with the Erie Canal in 1820. In 1827, twenty-five merchants and bankers studied the best means of restoring that portion of the Western trade which has recently been diverted from it by the introduction of steam navigation and their answer was to build a railroad—one of the first commercial lines in the world. Two men — Philip E. Thomas and George Brown — were the pioneers of the railroad and they spent the year 1826 investigating railway enterprises in England, which were at that time being tested in a comprehensive fashion as commercial ventures. Their investigation completed, they held a meeting on February 12,1827, including about twenty-five citizens. Thomas was elected as the first president and Brown the treasurer, the capital of the proposed company was fixed at five million dollars, but the B&O was initially capitalized in 1827 with a three million dollar issue of stock. Virtually every citizen of Baltimore owned a share, as the offering was oversubscribed, construction began on July 4,1828, when Charles Carroll of Carrollton did the groundbreaking. The initial tracks were built with granite stringers topped by iron rails. The first section, from Baltimore west to Ellicotts Mills, opened on May 24,1830. Developers decided to follow the Patapsco River to a point near Parrs Ridge, a later compromise allowed the two companies to share the right of way. The State of Maryland granted the B&O a charter to build a line from Baltimore to Washington, D. C. in 1831, and the Washington Branch was opened in 1835. This line joined to the mainline at Relay, Maryland, crossing the Patapsco on the Thomas Viaduct. This line was funded by the state, and was operated separately until the 1870s
