Why the gates at Fenway Park aren't in alphabetical order

By adamg on Thu, 04/18/2019 - 1:28pm

The Boston Guardian may have cracked the case.

Neighborhoods:

Fenway

Topics:

History

Free tagging:

Fenway Park

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Comments

For the same reason that people whine about new license plates

By anon
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 1:35pm

So why didn’t the Red Sox ever change the gate letters to go in order? That remains a mystery. And as to whether the jumbled lettering is a charming quirk or annoying nuisance? That, as with narrow seats facing away from home plate, is in the eye of the beholder.

Don't bother looking for the Clerk's Office - room 306 - on the third floor of a local city hall. They move the numbers with the offices. Makes it impossible to find in any logical way, but the lead-and-ciggy-poisoned brains of Seniors cant deal with new room numbers.

Now can anybody please explain the BPD district numbering system

By Muriel DeMarco
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 2:02pm

because I can't make heads nor tails out of it.

https://bpdnews.com/districts

There used to be a lot more districts

By adamg
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 2:11pm

Like District 16, the station house for which still stands on Boylston Street, but which is now a restaurant. And they were organized into larger administrative areas named with letters.

I'm assuming (which I realize is always a mistake) the use of those newfangled motor cars and the consequent reduction of walking beats made it possible to reduce the number of districts (note also that Boston has districts, not precincts), so today we're left with, oh, only E5, E13 and E18 to cover the southern third of the city.

Division 16

By Former South Ender
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 2:51pm

I believe the old police station was called Division 16 District / Division pretty similar though.

Yes, thanks

By adamg
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 4:05pm

Division!

Divisions and Districts

By Charles Bahne
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 5:58pm

Yes, there were originally 16 (at least) divisions numbered 1 through 16.

They decided to reorganize them into 5 districts lettered A through E. But each of the new districts had multiple stationhouses, and people were still calling them station 4, etc. So BPD compromised by combining the letter and number, thus A-1, D-4, and so on.

Some of the stationhouses have moved to new buildings, but kept the same number. Division 1 used to be on North Street where North Bennet Street School is today. District 4 used to be at Berkeley St. & Warren Ave., just off Tremont.

There was no station in Charlestown for many years, but when they built a new one about 10 years ago, they gave it the old division number that Charlestown number used to have, combined with the letter of the new district, thus A-15.

There are actually 2 former buildings for Division 16. The original station building -- not sure if it was called Division 16 back then -- is now occupied by Boston Architectural College, next to the fire station on Boylston. (For many years it was the ICA.) At some point BPD built a new Division 16 stationhouse next door, and even carved "Division Sixteen" over the door. When that Division consolidated with Division 4, the stationhouse became a restaurant.

There's an analogous situation with Boston Fire Department, except in the Fire Department the smaller units are Districts, and the larger ones are Divisions. Each Districts has 2 or 3 or 4 stationhouses, plus a District Chief. (Each stationhouse has an Engine and about half of them have Ladders; and if it serves as District or Division headquarters, it also has a District or Division Chief.) Then there are 2 Divisions, each of which has about 5 Districts. The Engines and Ladders are numbered sequentially in order of founding, or of annexation to the city -- with a lot of missing numbers where stations were closed. The Districts are start at 1 in downtown and go basically higher as you move further south; there are also missing numbers when Districts were consolidated. Division 1 is the north half of the city and Division 2 the south half.

Consolidation and elimination

By Cleary Squared
Fri, 04/19/2019 - 9:36pm

Before the "letter" system, each of the police districts were numbered.

The defunct divisions are as follows.

- Station 8 (Commercial Wharf) was the Harbor Patrol.
- Station 9 (Dudley Sq) and 10 (Roxbury Crossing) were consolidated into Station 2 in 1971; Station 2 is now B-2.
- Station 12 (South Boston) was consolidated with Station 6. Station 6 is now C-6.
- Station 15 (Charlestown) was consolidated with Station 1 in 1981. Station 1 is now A-1
- Station 16 (Back Bay) was consolidated with Station 4 (South End) in 1964. Station 4 is now D-4.
- Station 17 (West Roxbury) was consolidated with Station 5. Station 5 is now E-5.
- Station 19 (Mattapan) was consolidated with Station 3. Station 3 is now B-3.

The stations that kept their original numbers are A-7 (East Boston), C-11 (Fields Corner), E-13 (Jamaica Plain), D-14 (Brighton), and E-18 (Hyde Park).

And if you want to see a

By RWC
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 10:22pm

And if you want to see a neighborhood freak.....try changing their number!

Why isn't LGBT in

By anon
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 3:05pm

Why isn't LGBT in alphabetical order? How did lesbians get top billing?

because a bglt sounds

By schneidz
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 4:30pm

because a bglt sounds delicious.

Because...

By ScottB
Thu, 04/18/2019 - 5:17pm

That abbreviation tends to get a new letter every few years as the umbrella expands to cover more folks who don't fall under the traditionally-acceptable single-gender-attracted-to-the-opposite sex convention. 25 or 30 years ago you'd be likely to hear just "gay" or "gay & lesbian" (or the reverse). Then the circle expanded to bisexuals, the transgendered, intersex, etc. "Q" gets thrown in since even though "queer" was traditionally an epithet, the LGBTQ+ community has chosen to own the term a bit like some African-Americans have chosen to own a different epithet.

So the letters aren't in order simply because they're more-or-less in historical order of how the community coalesced.

And besides: Lesbians are freaking awesome!

As in Alpha.

There are easy ways around that...

By ScottB
Fri, 04/19/2019 - 12:19pm

At the Delta mother hub in Atlanta, the air traffic controllers refer to taxiway D as "Dixie" rather than "Delta." The announcements on the train say "'D' as in 'David.'"

And FWIW it's Delta Air Lines (not airlines).