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John Carlysle Stewart came to Western Pennsylvania from New Castle, Delaware in 1798 to survey revolutionary war grants. During his surveying, he discovered fifty acres at the junction of the Neshannock Creek and Shenango River that had been ‘overlooked’ during the initial surveys of the grants. He claimed this fifty acres for himself.
Carlysle platted a town, named New Castle, and set aside this piece of land as the town square. In one form or another, it has remained the town square ever since. The square has been reconfigured several times. Like most town squares in Western Pennsylvania, it is known as ‘The Diamond.’ It was officially dedicated to John F. Kennedy when a Kennedy Memorial was erected.
Here you’ll find monument’s for the country’s early wars – a Civil War Monument, a World War I Memorial, and a Spanish-American War Memorial – including transcriptions of a poem, In Flanders Field, and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The western portion of the diamond was wiped-out by a runaway truck coming down the North Hill on Jefferson Street in May of 2006. Work continues to restore this portion of the park, including the Kennedy Fountain.
The square was attractive at one time, surrounded by older buildings including the U.S. Post Office, but it has been besmirched in the 1990s by the building of a boxed, asphalt-surrounded Eckerd’s, complete with a drive-through.
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