Freemasons of New York State in the Civil War

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 he had a fear of being buried alive and had a buzzer installed in his mausoleum which if pressed by him would alert someone in the cemetery office to come and let him out. After twenty years the buzzer wire was finally cut. 

Viele's plan for Prospect Park, 1861. (Annual Reports of the Brooklyn Park Commissioners)