1885 KANSAS CITY MISSOURI BILLHEAD & VOUCHER, MERCHANTS & CO. SIGNED NETTLETON For Sale

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1885 KANSAS CITY MISSOURI BILLHEAD & VOUCHER, MERCHANTS & CO. SIGNED NETTLETON:
$5.99

1885 PHILADELPHIA PENNYSLVANIA BILLHEAD & VOUCHER, MERCHANTS & CO. IRON, TIN. VOUCHER SIGNED BY RAILROAD BARON GEORGE NETTLETON PRESIDENT OF THE UNION DEPOT, KANSAS CITY. ORIGINAL, 2 PCS

• MERCHANTS & CO. TIN PLATE, RUSSIA IRON, PIPE
• PHILADELPHIA ADRESS: 523 ARCH & 520 CHERRY STS
• SOLD TO UNION DEPOT, KANSAS CITY MISSOURI
• NETTLETON WAS THE PRESIDENT AND FOUNDER OF THE UNION DEPOT STATION IN KANSAS CITY AND LATER THE PRESIDENT OF THE FT. SCOTT & MEMPHIS RAILROAD.
• NICE PIECE OF EARLY KANSAS RAILROAD HISTORY.
• NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH THE CURRENT UNION STATION.
  

SEEMY STORE: VINTAGE HARDWARE STORE COLLECTIBLES

George H. Nettleton

Railroad Baron

1831-1896

by Daniel Coleman

At the peak of his career, George Nettleton lived in a West Bluffs mansion overlooking the Kansas City Stock Yards and Union Depot, both of which he managed in addition to the 800 miles of railroad track and 2,000 employees under his command. Nettleton was as close to a railroad baron as Kansas City could boast in the late 1800s, with the exception that he was not an owner of the various lines he controlled. Indeed, he had worked his way up in the railroad business from an entry-level, $1 per day axe-man position from which a promotion, he was told when he started the job, depended solely upon one?s \"ability to make yourself useful.\"

George H. Nettleton was born November 13, 1831, in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, located just northwest of Springfield. George left Massachusetts to study civil engineering and mathematics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, but his family struggled to afford the school, and he returned after just one year.

Nettleton dreamed of joining in the important work of building a modern, transcontinental rail system, and to this end he took a position as a laborer with the New Haven & New London Railroad. From axe-man to rodman, draughtsman to leveler, Nettleton worked his way up, and caught the attention of the man who had hired him, Chief Engineer Josiah Hunt. Upon completion of the New Haven and New London line, Hunt headed west to work on the Terra Haute & Alton Railroad, with Nettleton as one of his hand-picked division.

The 1850s saw Nettleton?s career as an engineer advancing steadily along with the miles of track laid by the various railroads for which he worked. After completing his section of the Terra Haute & Alton line, Nettleton was hired as a division engineer for the Great Western Railway of Illinois (later part of the Wabash Railroad). He served for a time as an assistant, then general superintendent of the Hannibal & St. Joseph Railroad. The Hannibal Bridge opened under Nettleton?s watch in 1869. Nettleton was also instrumental in the laying of one of the earliest rail lines in the Kansas City area when he oversaw completion of the Cameron to Kansas City road.

In 1872, Nettleton became the general superintendent of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, and from his headquarters in Topeka, Kansas, supervised the line?s extension as far as the state?s western border. He moved to Kansas City in 1874 and turned his attention toward developing the growing transportation center his railroad endeavors had helped to create. He organized and managed the Kansas City Stockyards, and, at the helm of the Union Depot Company, administered the city?s first major railroad station and yards in the West Bottoms. Nettleton was an important link to eastern capitalists who backed Kansas City business ventures. He helped incorporate the First National Bank of Kansas City and served as president of the Fort Scott & Memphis Railway.

They built a 12-room, brick mansion on the West Bluffs at 7th Street overlooking Nettleton?s industrial domain, but he died only a few years later at age 64, on March 26, 1896. In 1900, Julia Nettleton donated the structure to be used as a home for elderly women, and although these occupants moved to new quarters in 1917, the George H. Nettleton Home served as a living monument to its namesake throughout the twentieth century.

Union Depot

Union Avenue

completed 1878,demolished 1915

bySusan Jezak Ford

WhenUnion Depot was built in Kansas City?s West Bottoms, it was frequently calledthe ?Jackson County Insane Asylum? by those who believed that the city wouldnever have a need for such a large train station. It did not take long,however, for the city to outgrow the immense, new showplace.

KansasCity was home to 60,000 citizens when the depot was built in 1878. Thefashionable, elegant building replaced a two-room structure designed by OctaveChanute. The site for Union Depot was acquired from early Kansas City leadersKersey Coates and William H. Hopkins. In 1869 the Hannibal and St. JosephRailroad, the first railroad to reach Kansas City, purchased part of the sitefor railroad tracks from the two property owners. The Missouri River and GulfRailroad bought more land from the men in 1870 for Kansas City?s first trainstation. The city condemned 6.5 additional acres for the new Union Depot in1878. Altogether, the depot building?the second Union Depot in the country?andthe adjoining land cost the city $300,000. (St. Louis was the first city wherethe various railroad companies decided to locate their terminal facilities inone location.)

The ornate UnionDepot was built parallel to the bluffs of the West Bottoms and stood betweenthe railroad tracks and Union Avenue. As one approached the station from theupper elevation of downtown Kansas City, the towers of the depot recalled thefaraway skylines of Paris, Vienna, or Berlin. It is one of the most picturesqueand attractive buildings in the United States, The Kansas City Star reporter wrote. The writer went on todescribe the building as designed in the Renaissance style and somewhatFrenchy with its mansard roof and Parisian towers. The architect has given usthe handsomest and most pleasing union of two of the most pleasing styles inmodern architecture,? he concluded. The depot opened for business on April 8,1878.

ORIGINAL, LETTERHEADS, BILLHEAD, BILLHEADS, HARDWARE. NORMAL AGING FOR THIS PERIOD,

I AM PRICED MANY TIMESLOWER THAN MOST SELLERS ON .

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