Barnum your first thought is probably about his circus, or maybe his museum of oddities in 1840’s New York City. What you may not know was that Barnum lived in Bridgeport and was once a State Representative in Hartford and, in 1875, Bridgeport’s mayor. When the New York and New Haven Railroad reached Bridgeport in 1849, most people saw a passenger line. Bridgeport’s railroad tracks used to run at street level right through downtown…trains competing with pedestrians, horses, carriages. Though he didn’t live to see it completed, the New Haven Railroad spent $5 million in the 1890s ($183 million in today’s inflated dollars) to build that viaduct.