Long Description:"Egbert Ludovicus Viele (June 17, 1825 – April 22, 1902) was a
civil engineer and United States Representative from New York, as
well as an officer in the Union army during the American Civil War.
Viele was born in Waterford, New York (Saratoga County), a son
of Kathline Schuyler (Knickerbacker) and John L. Viele. He
graduated with honors from The Albany Academy and studied law
briefly before entering the United States Military Academy at West
Point, New York. He graduated on July 1, 1847, and was commissioned
as a brevet second lieutenant in the Second United States
Infantry.
He served in the Mexican-American War and was promoted to second
lieutenant in the First United States Infantry on September 8,
1847. From 1848 to 1849 he was assigned to establish a military
camp at Laredo, Texas, which was named "Camp Crawford." Viele
married Teresa Griffin on June 3, 1850, and was promoted to first
lieutenant on October 26 the same year. He resigned from the
service in 1853 to become a civil and military engineer.
He received an appointment as State Engineer of New Jersey in
1855 with a commission to conduct a topographical survey of the
state. He also surveyed the environs that would become Central Park
and submitted a design proposal. A competition was held which was
awarded to "the Greensward Plan" from Olmsted & Vaux). Viele
was appointed engineer-in-chief of Central Park in 1856, and
engineer of Prospect Park, Brooklyn in 1860.
Viele was a captain in the Engineer Corps of the Seventh New
York Regiment in 1860, and brigadier general of United States
Volunteers in 1861, at the beginning of the Civil War. He commanded
forces on the Savannah River during the siege of Fort Pulaski and
was appointed Military Governor of Norfolk, Virginia, in 1862. He
resigned from service on October 20, 1863, to again engage in civil
engineering.
Viele was author of a color map, a "Sanitary and Topographical
Atlas of the City and Island of New York" first published in 1865,
and now called the "Viele Map", which shows his survey of the
original streams, marshes and coastline of New York City,
superimposed over the street grid. The map is still used by modern
structural engineers and planners to design the foundations of new
buildings and structures in the city.[1] Two years later he worked
as chief engineer on the Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Rochester
Railroad. He and his wife were divorced in 1872, and he later
married Juliette Dana. From 1883 to 1884 Viele was the commissioner
of parks for New York City
He was elected as a Democrat to the Forty-ninth Congress (March
4, 1885 – March 3, 1887) and an unsuccessful candidate for
re-election in 1886 to the Fiftieth Congress; he resumed his former
business pursuits and engaged in literary work. Viele died at the
age of 77 in New York City, and was survived by his second wife and
four children. Francis Viélé-Griffin, the symbolist poet, was one
of his sons. He and his second wife are entombed in a pyramid
shaped monument, guarded by a pair of sphinxes, in the Post
Cemetery at West Point, New York. According to an official video
about West Point, Viele had a buzzer installed in his coffin. This
is on record with West Point's cemetery." ~ Wikipedia