David W. Flickwir

David Williamson Flickwir (1852-1935) was a civil engineer and railroad engineering contractor. His company built one of the world's largest concrete bridges, the Tunkhannock Viaduct.

Early life and career David W. Flickwir was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 26, 1852, to Joseph Williamson Flickwir (1809-1899) and Rebecca Barton (1824-1907). He entered railroad work in 1871 as a rodman in an engineering corps for a railroad. In 1875, Flickwir was an engineer for the construction of the buildings for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

In 1893, Flickwir married Charlotte Nalle (1856-1923) of Orange County, Virginia. Nalle died in October 1923. Flickwir remarried in May 1925 to Mildred A. Elder (1892-1991) who was the nursing superintendent at Roanoke Hospital (today Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital).

From 1912 to 1915, Flickwir & Bush built the DL&W's Tunkhannock Viaduct, a concrete deck arch bridge that spans the Tunkhannock Creek in Nicholson, Pennsylvania, in the United States, as part of the Nicholson Cutoff project. Measuring long and towering when measured from the creek bed ( from bedrock), it was the largest concrete structure in the world when completed in 1915 and still merited "the title of largest concrete bridge in America, if not the world" 50 years later.

In 1916, Flickwir was elected a director of the Norfolk and Western Railroad company succeeding Walter H. Taylor (1838-1916). Banker In 1926, Flickwir joined the First National Exchange Bank of Roanoke. Death and legacy By 1906, Flickwir was wealthy enough to commission a grand house in the Colonial Revival style. The house helped set architectural trends in the city: "The great history books on Roanoke all pay homage to this structure," said Kent Chrisman of the Roanoke Historical Society. In 2005, Jefferson College of Health Sciences renovated the house for use as its admissions and financial aid office and renamed it "Fralin House". Over the 1920s and 1930s, he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the hospital, which dubbed him its "Greatest Benefactor". A 1925 building he funded, the Flickwir Memorial Unit, still stands.

Flickwir died in 1935 after a short illness at age 83.

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