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An incline was constructed and at the top was set an ingeniously contrived platform, which was constructed in such a manner as to tip when the car reached a certain point, thereby allowing the car a free passage down the incline.
After the weight of the car was removed, the platform would return to a level plane. Two parallel sets of rails were constructed on the incline; the object being to use the power generated by the descending car, to raise the empty car on the opposite track. These tracks were connected a short distance from the foot of the incline with the main railroad line.
During the years immediately following, the Granite Railway Company erected a number of stone houses on the line of the present Bryant Avenue; including a residence for the superintendent, where also a large stable was erected to house the horses and oxen owned by the company.
About the year 1830 the company erected adjoining the Highway (now Adams St) the large stone structure here shown, as a public house for the accommodation of transient guests. This Public House was known for years as the Railway House and later, when purchased by a Mr. Russell, was known as the Russell House, and still later known as the Blue Bell. The house the past few years has been conducted as a tea house to accommodate the automobilists who throng Adams Street during the summer months.
During this period the company also erected cutting sheds nearly opposite the store of C. F. Tarbox in East Milton, where according to Teele’s History of Milton, most of the cutting of stone was done for thirty years when the sheds at the foot of the incline were erected. Cutting sheds were also erected at the Bunker Hill Wharf where large quantities of these stones were finished.
Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the President of the Granite Railway. Company, was born in Boston December 15, 1764. His father was a merchant of Boston and his mother was one of the founders of the Boston female asylum.
Colonel Perkins was prepared for Harvard by the Reverend Mr. Shuts of Hingham. He married in 1788 Sarah, the daughter of Simon Eliot, and in 1792 formed a partnership with his brother James in Boston which continued until the latter’s death in 1822, and in the meantime he established a house in Canton, China under the name of Perkins and Company.
He traveled in Europe 1794-5 and returning to Boston, was elected President of the Boston Branch Bank of the United States in 1796. In 1805 he was elected to Massachusetts Senate where he served continuously for nearly twenty years. In 1826 he was the projector and President of the Granite Railway Company.
Colonel Perkins retired from business with a large fortune in 1838. He was also prominent in establishing the Massachusetts General Hospital; also an asylum for the insane; and, about the year 1812 donated his mansion house on Pearl Street Boston valued at $50,000 for a blind asylum, which was the foundation of the Perkins Institute for the Blind at South Boston.
In 1853, with other members of his family, he gave more than $60,000 to the Boston Athenaeum, was the largest contributor to the erection of the Bunker Hill Monument and toward the completion of the Washington Monument. In 1827 he published a small book intended to teach the blind the art of reading.
He died in Brookline Jan. 11, 1854
Gridley Bryant was born in Scituate in 1789, and as a young man was devoted to his studies of mechanics and developed into an inventor of national repute. He was associated with many of the noted architects and engineers of the early part of the nineteenth century. In 1825 he was in conference with the promoters of the building of Bunker Hill Monument and, in the fall of the same year presented the petitions to the Legislature for the incorporation of the railway. After the passage of the act of incorporation, Mr. Bryant proceeded to survey the route from the quarry to tide water, and the following April started to build the road; and on the 7th October 1826 the first train of cars passed over the whole length of the road. At the time, Bryant’s work excited an almost unequaled interest throughout the country. It was in fact a pioneer American undertaking, and he built an improved tramway rather than a modern railroad. During the construction of this railway, Mr. Bryant devised the appliances necessary to its completion; among which was the turntable, switch, and frog, and the moveable truck for the eight wheel railroad car.
Mr. Bryant, in a letter written in 1859, says “I invented the portable derrick in 1823 and used it in building the United States Bank building at Boston. This with every other of my inventions I have abandoned to the public.”
Mr. Bryant aided the architect in preparing the foundations for Bunker Hill Monument and on the 17th June 1825, the corner stone was laid by General de La Fayette and Mr. Bryant assisted as master builder at the ceremony. A full record of the career of Gridley Bryant might truthfully be termed the history of a busy and useful life. He was constantly employed upon the construction of important public works.
The last few years of his life were spent in Scituate where he died on the 13 June 1867 aged 77 years and 10 months.
