Hey, there! Log in / Register
Which Washington Street?
By adamg on Fri, 03/14/2008 - 8:59am
Boston's failure to change street names when it annexed its neighbors in the 18th and 19th centuries has come back to haunt police, who dispatched cruisers to a downtown Malaysian restaurant instead of to a Dorchester murder scene Sunday morning, the Globe reports.
In this case, it wouldn't have made much difference, because the woman had apparently been dead for several hours (although the neighbors who kept calling were worried the murderer would come back), but it highlights a never-ending issue with Boston street names - and even street numbers.
On Sunday, the dispatcher - and a new mapping system the police installed in January - got snared by this issue, just like anybody who's spent a fair amount of time using Google Maps to find Boston addresses. The system popped up several possible locations and the dispatcher assumed the downtown one (for Penang) was the correct one (ironically, the dispatcher would have been better off using Google Maps: If you type "689 washington st., boston, ma" into it, it displays the Dorchester address).
The police were heading to Washington Street on Sunday. There are at least three streets with that name in the city: in downtown, Dorchester, and West Roxbury.
Note to Globe: Not to carp about an otherwise good story, but the West Roxbury Washington Street also runs through Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Roslindale. Also, there's a Washington Street in Brighton.
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Washington Street
The Washington Street in downtown Boston is the same one as in the South End, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Dedham (and beyond, to the Rhode Island border). No addresses are repeated on this street within Boston city limits.
Maybe the other Washington Streets should be renamed, though. Besides the ones in Dorchester and Brighton, there's also a small one in Charlestown. And finally, there's North Washington Street, which runs from Haymarket to the Charlestown Bridge.
Same street?
I think it would be more accurate to say its' historically the same street, or conceptually the same street. Washington Street from Boston to Rhodie is not actually continuous. It stops and starts and disappears and reappears left and right. If you didn't know that, you wouldn't even be able to follow it out of Boston, because you'd end up on Hyde Park all of a sudden.
Same street?
I'm less familiar with it beyond Norwood, but on a map it looks like I could walk continuously down a street with this name until I reach Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where the name changes to Broadway.
Kinda Sorta - wear rubber boots!
You'd end up dead-ending at Smiths Pond in South Walpole if you kept going continuously down that street.
Yes, you could
But it would be easier to ride a white bull, like the last guy who walked from Boston to Rhode Island.
Depends on the definition of "continuously"
If "continuously" means "going straight on the same road until you have to take a 90 degree left turn onto a street with a different name while the street with the same name goes straight across and dead-ends..." then, sure, continuously. And Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman.
Ah, yes, the Forest Hills jig
Where Hyde Park Ave. and Washington Street get all knotted up and you can never tell which is which (apparently, Hyde Park Avenue turns into Washington Street at Ukraine Way now - even though Washington Street also continues on the other side of the train station - and never mind that all the businesses across from the stop still seem to have Hyde Park Ave. addresses on their awnings, but don't mind me, I'm still bitter about Rte. 1 getting re-routed).
The original problem was
The original problem was that the railroad tracks crossed the Dedham Turnpike (Washington street) at an acute angle - probably about 15 degrees. Hyde Park ave came in to the railroad station area later, and connected with Washington street before it crossed the tracks. The intersection has been re-routed multiple times since then, but Washington street is still continuous - it just doglegs around the T station now.
No, no, no!
Hey now, that's South Street on the other side of the station. It doesn't become Washington St. until after South Street veers right to enter the Arboretum. Ukraine Street should have been named New Washington, but unfortunately, that was already taken for the block between Old Washington and South Street, not to be confused with Arborway, to which New Washington directly feeds.
What happened to Route 1
Adam, What do you know about the rerouting of Route 1. I do know the change took place in 1989 but what I want to know is why are there still Route 1 signs still up on Storrow drive, Boylston St (near Fenway Park) and a new one just went up on Centre St in Roslindale directing cars to Route 1??? I am doing a photo documentary about this issue. Can you help with any info?
MDC, DCR, need I say more?
I don't know for a fact, but I suspect it's just your basic Massachusetts bureaucracy at work - of the same sort that still has subway maps showing an Arborway line.
What is odd is that when the DCR took over, it spent a ton of money replacing the bright green (and much better if you ask me) MDC signs with all those pale THIS IS A GENERIC SIGN signs - heck, they even let the governor bonk his head taking down the old Reverse the Curse sign - and yet they've proven unable to change those stupid Storrow Drive signs. At least the Highway Department figured out it needed to do something about the old "Rte. 1 N" sign on 128 (even if only to put in a lame "To Rte. 1A" sign in its place).
But wait, there's a NEW Rte. 1 sign on Centre Street? Whoa! I gotta go take a look on the way home from work. A) Because that's just stupider than stupid and B) Because they blanked out the "1" on other signs on the parkway years ago (including the one that always drives the kidlet nuts because it says "Boston 6 miles" even though it's actually in Boston, albeit West Roxbury).
Globe reporter not wrong, just lazy
Note that the Globe story only said "There are at least three streets with that name in the city," which is technically correct.
It does, however, point out laziness on the part of the reporter who could have consulted a map. Or set foot in the city's many neighborhoods.
More on Washington Streets
Our resident street historian, Charles Swift, has written a couple of times on the issue:
Washington Street, The Longest In Boston.
How Many Washington Streets Do We Need?
Other Presidents
Could they take the longest one, keep that as Washington St., and rename the rest like other places had to do when 911 came into the area?
Let's see, if we restricted it to the dead ones and avoided duplicates there are probable 30 other presidents to work with (I'm sure that Adams and Lincoln are popular, and Jackson is common, too).
I am surprised this doesn't
I am surprised this doesn't happen more often, frankly.
I didn't even know there was another Bowdoin St. until last year. When someone says Bowdoin St. to me, I think of the street next to the State House.
T Planner Issue
The MBTA planner is advising me to pick up the #91 Bus down Broadway (winter hill section) in Somerville to get to Sullivan Station.
One problem: that bus goes down WASHINGTON ST in Somerville to Sullivan Station.
Could this be another Wash-ambiguity issue? Or maybe the T planner has more interesting problems.
Back in the day, the cops
Back in the day, the cops who worked in the dispatch room knew every street in the city, and would not be confused by something like this. Then, the city decided that having cops working the dispatch job was a waste, so they replaced them with civilians who didn't give a damn, and had to rely on maps and computers.
My personal experience
...is that there are both 911 operators who care, and those who don't; some are abrasive, others are helpful and friendly. Same at the MBTA customer service hotline; I've spoken to a sweet grandmother type, and the "yea buddy, we'll get right on that" type.
Psychic Dispatchers!
I didn't realize they used to have clairvoyant cops who could get a dial in and "just know" where it was coming from when the person on the other end was disoriented or incapacitated. Unfortunately, these same brave cops were unable to use their powers to solve crime as a matter of family tradition and pride.
The 911 and enhanced 911 came into being because of the dearth of psychic dispatchers that had those special powers of GPS and call tracing.
Many communities around the world had to rename streets and disambiguate their street grids when new systems that are human driven came into being. Somehow, Boston escaped this. This didn't happen because "things changed and change is always bad", it happened because of incomplete implementation of the system.
Isn't there a Washington St.
Isn't there a Washington St. in Brighton too?
Yes, and Adam mentioned it in his post already
oops! That's what I get for
oops! That's what I get for multitasking.
Latest development
From now on, when someone calls 911 about a serious emergency at an address with a street name that exists in more than one neighborhood, dispatchers must send cruisers to all the possible locations.
"Serious emergency" means crime in progress or act of violence and this knee-jerk reaction to the other day's event will last until they find a better solution within the computer system.
Good thing we've got so many police available that they can respond to every call 3-4 times over all at once. Never mind that the operator was given 3 different addresses to choose from and took the first one that came up on her map rather than ask the caller to be more specific about the neighborhood. This was a case of user error and the answer is now to waste police man-hours and make a fool-proof map system rather than correcting the training for the 911 operators.
Fixing all the Washington streets
Cleary Squared makes a proposal for renaming four of the five Washingtons.