Alexander J. Cassatt (December 8, 1839 _ December 28, 1906) was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1899 and 1906. The best-remembered accomplishment under his stewardship was the planning and beginning of the project to finally give the PRR a station in New York City, which became Pennsylvania Station. Unfortunately, Cassatt died before his grand station was complete.
Cassatt more than doubled the PRR's total assets during his term, from US$276 million to US$594 million (an increase of 115 percent). Track and equipment investment increased by 146 percent. The route from New York through Philadelphia, Harrisburg and Altoona to Pittsburgh was made four_tracked throughout, Pennsy's "Broad Way". Many other lines were double_tracked; almost every part of the system was improved. New freight cutoffs avoided stations; grade crossings were eliminated, flyovers were built to streamline common paths through junctions, terminals were redesigned, and much more. Cassatt initiated the Pennsy's program of electrification which led to the road being the United States' most electrified system.
Cassatt died in 1906 after a six-month illness. He was succeeded as Pennsylvania Railroad president by James McRea.
Cassatt was born in what is now Pittsburgh and raised in Philadelphia in a family that valued education and viewed travel as a means to encourage learning.
Cassatt's decision to seek a vocation at all was unsettling to the affluent parents of a daughter in mid-Nineteenth Century America.
Cassatt had already shown an awareness of Oriental art in earlier compositions, and woodcuts had been around Paris since the 1860s, but her interest in such work was heightened by repeated visits to a large exhibition of Japanese graphic art in Paris in 1890.
The most important influence on Cassatt in the years before 1875 was exercised by Edouard Manet, although he did not accept students, she saw his works and they were much discussed both by painters and art critics.
Mary Cassatt died at the Château de Beaufresne on June 14, 1926, and was buried in the family vault at nearby Mesnil-Théribus.
AlexanderCassatt and his son Robert, the older brother of Mary, was a successful businessman with the Pennsylvania Railroad.
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