The Illinois Central Stone Arch Railroad Bridges are a trio of limestone railroad bridges in the city of Dixon, Illinois, United States. The bridges were constructed between 1852 and 1855 as the Illinois Central Railroad laid its first rail lines across the state of Illinois. They were designed by Robert F. Laing for Laing and Douglas Construction Company, a railroad company contractor during the 1850s. Though each limestone bridge is similar in design, they each have different clearances, ranging between 12 and 15 feet (3.7 m to 4.6 m). The bridges remained in use by the railroad until 1985, and the three bridges were added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1987.
Read more about Illinois Central Stone Arch Railroad Bridges: History, Design, Significance
Famous quotes containing the words illinois, central, stone, arch, railroad and/or bridges:
“An Illinois woman has invented a portable house which can be carried about in a cart or expressed to the seashore. It has also folding furniture and a complete camping outfit.”
—Lydia Hoyt Farmer (1842–1903)
“My solitaria
Are the meditations of a central mind.
I hear the motions of the spirit and the sound
Of what is secret becomes, for me, a voice
That is my own voice speaking in my ear.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Thir dread commander: he above the rest
In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a Towr; his form had yet not lost
All her Original brightness, nor appear’d
Less than Arch Angel ruind, and th’ excess
Of Glory obscur’d: As when the Sun new ris’n
Looks through the Horizontal misty Air
Shorn of his Beams, or from behind the Moon
In dim Eclips disastrous twilight sheds
On half the Nations, and with fear of change
Perplexes Monarchs.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“... no other railroad station in the world manages so mysteriously to cloak with compassion the anguish of departure and the dubious ecstasies of return and arrival. Any waiting room in the world is filled with all this, and I have sat in many of them and accepted it, and I know from deliberate acquaintance that the whole human experience is more bearable at the Gare de Lyon in Paris than anywhere else.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
“We live technologically, with man as the master of nature, man as the engineer, and let anyone who raises his voice against it stop using bridges not built by nature.... No electric light bulbs, no engines, no atomic energy, no calculating machines, no anaesthetics—back to the jungle.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)