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Boston's industrial past lives in Hyde Park
By adamg on Fri, 11/23/2007 - 11:33pm
Fans of the fading industrial look know to head to Hyde Park. Although the Hyde Park rust belt extends mainly along Hyde Park Avenue south of Cleary Square, there are interesting pockets elsewhere in the neighborhood - such as Providence Street, which runs from Metropolitan Avenue to West Street, a couple blocks in from Hyde Park Avenue, next to the Amtrak main line.
My favorite structure is the one being reclaimed by nature - the roof has collapsed and there's now a small forest growing in what used to be the shop or warehouse floor:
A still-active taxi yard is guarded by this attack cat, who made sure I got nowhere near the vehicles:
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Comments
cool pics
you might like:
www.abandonedbutnotforgotten.com
www.infiltration.org/resources-massachusetts.html
Cool, thanks!
I think I know what I'll be doing this cold afternoon - looking at the photos on those sites.
Providence st is where Stony
Providence st is where Stony brook used to flow under the railroad tracks, from the west side over to the east, Hyde Park ave side. It still does, but it's underground in a conduit now.
Here is an 1888 map of the neighborhood, showing the tracks crossing Stony Brook.
If you walk approach from the other side of the tracks it looks like this:
And right at a point behind Serino's on Hyde Park ave, you find this:
That's the railroad track embankment on top, and the granite slab has collapsed, revealing a tunnel that passes under the tracks. Is that where Stony brook goes under? I dunno, but it's there for some reason.
Let's see if this formatting worked.
Clarendon Hills Station
Cool! I noticed that collapsed culvertish thing behind Serino's on my walk the other day and also wondered what it was.
I'm also interested in the train station marked on the map, because I bet that's where William Fox (as in 20th Century Fox) used to get off the train from New York to walk up to his summer home on Metropolitan Avenue in Roslindale.
For a great look at
For a great look at industrial Hyde Park, take a look at this Bird's Eye map. Choose Full Screen to see it best.
http://maps.bpl.org/id/10159/
Factory Street
Awesome.
I always thought Factory Street was called that because the Shaw's used to be a factory (it kind of looks like it might have been at one time), but from that map, it's pretty obvious it got its name from a giant factory where the senior-citizen complex across the street now is.
That factory building was
That factory building was there when my family moved from Jamaica Plain in the early Seventies. It ran right along Mother brook, as that map shows. As always, they love to tear down instead of rehab.
I should add, I worked at
I should add, I worked at L.E. Mason on Business street, across the tracks from Shaws. I rode by recently and they had torn down the main foundry building. That was one of the old factories as well.
Hyde Park Open Studios, and a question
If you want to explore this part of town, next weekend's Hyde Park Open Studios are an excellent opportunity,
One question you may be able to answer: can pedestrians cross the closed Sprague Street Bridge?
Yes. There's a footbridge on
Yes. There's a footbridge on the right.
You might even be able to drive across
Sprague Street Bridge repairs near completion.
Sprague St bridge
The leaflet that I picked up from Hyde Park Open Studios shows the bridge as closed, and the map on their web site says "Please note that the bridge will not be open during Open Studios."
This Google aerial photo shows a large swath of mostly empty land along Industrial Drive, as well as a large number of freight cars parked on a siding parallel to West Milton Street. What is this area?
The bridge is closed to cars, but ...
There's been a pedestrian bridge since they started tearing down the old bridge. Really: I've walked on it (several of the photos here were taken from it).
That blobby area is, basically, an old freight yard on the Boston/Dedham line, now owned by the MBTA. A developer had proposed turning it into a large condo project, but the MBTA rescinded the sale because the developer hadn't made enough progress cleaning up the hazardous wastes left over from a century or so of storing locomotives there - I guess that was a condition of the sale.
Readville Car Yards
The area you describe was the location of the Readville car yards, which built railroad cars in the early 1900s. One or two buildings are still standing.
Where the Shaw's is now
That bucolic land at the top, from Mother Brook on the left, to the train tracks at the very top, to Factory Street on the right, to Central Park Avenue (now Hyde Park Avenue) in front of the factory? That's now the Shaw's, the Shaw's parking lot and some auto-body joint.
I can't believe they tore down the factory. That would've made some great apartments. Well, at least some of the old buildings are still up, like the Westinghouse plant that's now offices down in Readville.
Adam The Westinghouse plant
Adam
The Westinghouse plant was built by B.F. Sturtevant when they moved from Jamaica Plain soon after 1901. They built blower fans for ventilation - everything from woodworking shops to Destroyers. They were the leading blower fan maker in the country. Westinghouse bought them out in the 1940s.
Got to their site to read about their time in Hyde Park, and make sure you read the aviation section - they built planes there for a while as well.
http://www.sturtevantfan.com/History.html
Great Pic!
That cat has attitude for sure. He takes his job seriously. :)
"Beware"
I kinda want to grab the scary sign on the factory floor in the 2nd photo. Would look great in my garage.
Or maybe it was left there intentionally to warn innocent bystanders about the killer cat?