Death of Rea

Since 1880 six men have been president of the Pennsylvania Railroad. They were: Roberts, 1880-1897 Thompson, 1897-1899 Cassatt, 1899-1906 McRea, 1906-1913 Rea, 1913-1925 Atterbury, 1925- Fifth on the list in point of time, but not of stature, is Samuel Rea, who died last week in his home at Bryn Mawr, suburb of Philadelphia. Of him said Frederick D. Underwood, onetime (1901-26) president of Erie Railroad: "I have known four presidents of the Pennsylvania preceding Mr. Rea ... he stood head and shoulders above them all."

Tremendous, indeed, were the changes in the Penn system during the 50 years in which Mr. Rea was associated with it. He began as a rodman in 1871, at a time when the Penn road had hardly outgrown its original (1846) charter which provided that it should extend from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh. Not only did he see the road pass through the greater part of the expansion which has made it a 12,000-mile system, but it was directly through his efforts that the Pennsylvania secured access to Manhattan. He planned a bridge across the Hudson from Jersey City to Manhattan. When other roads refused to cooperate, he went under instead of over the water and built the Hudson River tubes. Later he made an arrangement with the New York, New Haven & Hartford and built the Hell Gate Bridge, and still later got control of the Long Island Railroad and connected it to the Penn with tunnels under the East River.

In his later years, as head of a great railroad, Mr. Rea was not only rail tycoon but public figure as well. Thus many a person knew that he belonged to the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, that he supported Alfred Smith in the late campaign. He was famed, too, as a woodchopper and as a collector of English antique silver. Doubtless many of the thousands who this week passed through Manhattan's Pennsylvania Station realized that in it Samuel Rea has an enduring and a fitting memorial.