Developer removes trees, scrub along ancient rail line in West Roxbury to make way for four single-family homes

A developer is getting ready to build four single family homes off Spring Street in West Roxbury, on a former railroad right of way on which steam locomotives once paused to pick up passengers at a small train stop before thundering across a bridge over Spring Street, hauling commuters from Dedham and West Roxbury up to Park Square in Boston.

The last passenger train ran over the long gone Spring Street Bridge in 1940, but even after tearing down the bridge and selling off the land now occupied by the Star Market plaza, the railroad - eventually Penn Central - held onto the right of way until selling it in 1973 to the MBTA in 1973, which then also sat on the land, as one can see on a map of the area. Also left behind: The stone abutment on one side of Spring Street.

Finally, in 2011, the MBTA sold the half-acre stretch along Powell Street between Spring and Cass to a Powell Street resident for $325,040, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records. In 2020, he sold the land, pretty much entirely covered in trees and scrub, to developer Anthony Petruziello for $1.03 million, the records show.

Last August, Petruziello got building permits from ISD to put in four houses - unusually for Boston, they required no zoning variances. In January, Petruziello sold the land and building rights for $1.45 million to another developer, Ivan Biesty, who has since put up two signs near the abutment about the project advertising "anticipated completion" this December.

The parcel's railroad history, as part of the West Roxbury Branch, dates to the 1840s, with the opening of a 5 1/2-mile Boston and Providence Railroad branch line.

The line ran between the Dedham Village train station (now the Dedham Center municipal parking lot) and the main line at Tollgate in Forest Hills, by way of Baker and Spring Streets in West Roxbury, after which it followed the route of today's Needham Line through West Roxbury and Roslindale (including what became the infamous Bussey Street Bridge in Roslindale). Unlike today's terminus at South Station, though, the line ended - and began - at a station in Park Square.

The West Roxbury Branch initially crossed Spring Street at grade - next to a small station there, along what is now Powell Street. In 1896, the state legislature passed an act requiring the New York, New Haven and Hartford, the state and the city to work together to eliminate all grade crossings on the West Roxbury Branch (and also the Dedham Branch, which connected Dedham to Boston via Readville).

The railroad hired a contractor to build a bridge across Spring Street and the city widened Spring Street from 40 to 80 feet and excavated a dip under the planned bridge so that vehicles (such as trolleys) could get under it without getting stuck.

That dip remains today - and might explain why that particular stretch floods in heavy rains.

The bridge was a "span plate girder" bridge, according to a 1901 report in the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, which added "the abutments at Spring street were built upon broad foundations of concrete, resting directly upon quicksand.

The report said engineers had "considerable difficulty" in rebuilding Spring Street under the bridge, and that it needed twice the expected amount of "broken stone" to keep the road in place above quicksand.

The Spring Street bridge, looking towards Lagrange, in 1904; today's stone wall is on the right (From the Boston City Archives):

Flooding in December, 2023:

Ridership on the line seems to have peaked in 1900 and began declining afterwards, in part due to riders preferring the Boston Elevated Railway's extensive trolley network. In 1938, the New Haven shut Spring Street station, along with 87 other Boston-area stations as it tried to re-emerge from bankruptcy. Its bankruptcy turned into a court case, known as the 88 Stations case, that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Eventually, the state agreed to let the railroad shut a fair number of stations in exchange for continuing to operate at least some commuter-rail lines.

The railroad shut passenger service on the West Roxbury Branch for good in 1940. In 1945, the Metropolitan Transit Recess Commission called for turning the old branch into a rapid-transit line between Dedham and Forest Hills, using an overhead catenary, at a cost of roughly $4.1 million. As we know, the idea went nowhere - the same destination as a proposal in 1916 by the state Public Service Commission to convert the line into an extension of the Boston Elevated's Main Line (today's Orange Line) from Forest Hills to Dedham.

H/t John.