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| Gordon Monument in Wright Square
 The Gordon Monument, located in the center of Wright Square, was created to honor William Washington Gordon. The monument memorializes Gordon and depits the significance of the Centeral Railroad, the first railroad to be established in Georgia. It was erected in 1883.
W. W. Gordon died at a relatively young age (1796-1842), before the railroad was finished. The railroad itself was to be his monument. After a decade of prosperity in the 1850's, the railroad was almost completely demolished by Sherman's army in 1864. The rebuilt railroad survived unprecedented competition during the Reconstruction period, and a severe national depression in the 1870's, often by sacrificing the payment of dividends to the stockholders, and by reducing the pay of the employees, from the president on down.
Gordon's son, W. W. Gordon, Jr., was elected to the Central's board of directors for the first time in 1877. In 1880, a faction of directors wanted to change the conservative fiscal policies of the Central, and lease it to the L&N Railroad of Louisville, which would temporarily enrich the stockholders, but end the Central's independence. W. W. Gordon, Jr. was a staunch ally of William Wadley, the railroad's president. The timing of the monument is a reminder of the battle over the railroad's policies; it also represents the apex of the Central's power, independence and prestige in the 1880's. |