Notes |
A century since there was, among the array of shops along then fashionable Second Street, a retail dry goods store conducted
by an energetic young citized named Matthew Newkirk, who so prospered that he was voted, twenty years later, to the presidency
of a group of transportation enterprises which he presently welded into the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad,
in testimony of which there yet stands, near the site of the once famous "Newkirk Viaduct," at Gray's Ferry, a neglected monument.
Out of the profits of this and other achievements he built this palatial home, in 1837, at the southwestern corner of Thirteenth
and Arch streets. Mr. Newkirk resided here about thirty years. He died in 1868. Just prior to the Centennial period the Society
of the Sons of St. George bought the property and made extensive alterations. The long-familiar bronze of "St. George and
the dragon," which surmounted the building, was cast in England. When the Society removed, not long ago, to its new home at
Nineteenth and Arch streets, the bronze was taken along. The site of the mansion is now occupied by the "St. George Building,"
a business structure.
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