Samuel Rea

Samuel Rea (1855-March 1929)

Early Life and Family

Samuel Rea was born in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1855. His parents were James D. Rea and Ruth Blair Moore. His paternal grandfather General John Rea was in Congress from Bedford and Franklin PA during the terms of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Through the marrige of his father's siblings he was related to the Asa Childs and therefore Henry Clay Frick families. Samuel's father died when Samuel was 13.

Samuel Rea married Mary Black, the daughter of Jane Black. In 1880 Samuel and Mary lived with her widowed mother and family in Allegheny PA. Their children, born after 1880, include George Rea and Ruth Rea. ["A Century and a Half of Pittsburg and Her People", by John Newton Boucher ; illustrated. Vol. 4. 1908.1854-1933. page 223]

The Pennsylvania Railroad

Samuel Rea began his vocational life as a clerk in a country store. In 1871, Samuel Rea began his connection with the Pennsylvania Railroad at 16. Except for an intermission from 1875 to 1879 (when he worked for the P&LE Railroad), he served continuously on the Pennsylvania Railroad until his retirement from office as President in 1925.

By age 31 Rea was assistant engineer in the construction of chain suspension bridges over the Monongahela River at Pittsburgh. 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.

Finally, as head of the 12,000-mile system employing 250,000 men, he became one of the three or four dominating powers in American transportation. Rea was considered largely responsible for many features of the Esch-Cummins Transportation Act, whereby the railroads were returned to private control in 1920. ["Time" Magazine, Jan 4, 1924]

In 1886, Samuel Rea became a member of the New York Stock Exchange—being the first seat held in the city of Pittsburgh. He remained a member for 12 years. In 1888 he published a book called “The Railways Terminating in London: With a Description of the Terminating Stations”.

Samuel Rea was a member of the exclusive South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, whose earthen dam failed in May of 1889, causing the Johnstown Flood. After the Flood, Rea removed to Bryn Mawr, PA, to an estate called "Waverly Heights" designed by architect Addison Hutton; it now serves as Waverly Heights, a lifecare community in Gladwyne.

Rea was reared in the Presbyterian faith and said he preferred reading Prof. Moffet’s translation of the Bible. Samuel Rea retired as President of the Pennsylvania Railroad system in 1925 at the age of 70, having served as President from 1913 to 1925.

Pennsylvania Station

Perhaps Rea's most notable achievement, Pennsylvania Station was built to accommodate as many as half a million daily passengers, and soon after it opened, Samuel Rea, by this time the president of the Pennsylvania, found himself defending his work against charges that it had been wastefully overbuilt. Time was to prove him right. By 1919 the station was accommodating almost thirty-five million a year, eclipsing Grand Central Terminal as the busiest New York station. Less than a decade later more than sixty million used it annually, enough to make it the most heavily used railroad station in all North America. By 1939 its yearly traffic had reached a then record level of almost sixty-six million passengers. [American Heritage: “Penn Station Lives!” by William D. Middleton, Fall 1997]

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