John Fitch (inventor) - Memorials

Memorials

Despite his obscurity among other American inventors and engineering pioneers such as Fulton and Peter Cooper, Fitch's contributions have not been forgotten and has been remembered with a number of memorials and namesakes. The John Fitch Steamboat Museum on the grounds of Craven Hall in Warminster, Pennsylvania includes a 1/10th scale (6 feet (1.8 m)-long), 100 pounds (45 kg) model of Fitch's original steamboat.

Other remembrances include:

• An 1876 fresco in the United States Capitol by Constantino Brumidi depicts Fitch working on one of his steamboat models.

• A memorial to Fitch stands in Bardstown, Kentucky's Courthouse Square, complete with a replica of his first steamboat.

• A small Fitch Monument in Warminster, Pennsylvania was moved in September 2012 from York and Street Roads to the Craven Hall Historical Society site and site of the John Fitch Steamboat Museum at the southeast corner of Street & Newtown Roads in Warminster, PA.

• John Fitch High School was built on Bloomfield Avenue in Windsor, Connecticut in the 1934. It became an elementary school in the 1950s. The building was converted to elderly housing in the 1990s, but its facade still bears Fitch's name and likeness carved in stone. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

• The John Fitch Elementary School in Levittown, Pennsylvania.

• The state of Connecticut has designated U.S. Route 5 through South Windsor and East Windsor as the "John Fitch Boulevard". The four-lane highway runs parallel to, and often within sight of, the Connecticut River.

• The state of New Jersey designated a section of Rt. 29 in Trenton, along the Delaware River, the John Fitch Parkway.

• Fitch's journal and memoirs were published many years later as The Autobiography of John Fitch. Though told with the biases of a bitter and disappointed man, they are a vivid and moving picture of his times and unhappy life.