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The ultimate hollow sidewalk downtown: Peering down into the netherworld beneath Devonshire Street
By adamg on Sun, 11/14/2021 - 12:18pm
If one were a pessimist, one might think it's not a good thing that there's a crack in the sidewalk on Devonshire Street near Water through which you can peer down into the State Street T stop, or maybe the basement of the building it's next to:
boston is so fun and cool you can look at the state street station from the street! pic.twitter.com/2zhmIvWTvy
— ms. Bay Transit Authority (@pasta_niece) November 13, 2021
Back in November, 2020, at least, the hole had been patched.
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Comments
Safety is #1 for the MBTA.
Safety is #1 for the MBTA. Well... maybe #1001?
Boston and the building owner
are responsible for the sidewalk
Quick-changing culpability
Falling through sidewalk: "Damn you cityahbawstin!"
Then falling through State St. ceiling: "Freakin' T!"
Duct tape it.
Duct tape it.
Stuff of hollow sidewalk nightmares!
I guess that patch last year was just a bandaid.
Pray
That a delivery truck doesn't park on the sidewalk or the roof of the subway will collapse.
Not The T
That is the basement of 85 Devonshire Street.
The Orange Line goes down both sides of Washington Street.
The Devonshire entrance to the T goes under the Winthrop Building and part of Water Street.
No T tunnel goes under Devonshire Street.
Remember, a lot of these buildings were former newspaper buildings. Many of these buildings went down 3 and 4 levels go get printing presses onto bedrock.
That is what you are seeing.
What newspapers?
None that lasted into the current era I presume.
See Below
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_Row_(Boston)
By the way, there are lots and lots of buildings in Boston that go two and three stories down and lots that extend under the sidewalks.
Yup
Called areaways. Makes the sidewalk actually private and the maintenance the obligation of the property owner. Soooooo that will never get “fixed” fixed.
Yup
Took me a minute to figure out where on Devonshire this was Google Maps
Its right in front of the old PSG staffing office on the corner (opposite the Devonshire entrance). You can even see the 'fix' in the street view!
But when it was PSG, I met recruiters there a few times, and it was a busy office. But the recruiter's desk space was downstairs (via the staircase against the wall) and they would come up and meet you at street level (you'd meet on that level).
But it always felt like that staircase led to a clown car because recruiters kept coming up.. (I was one of many in the waiting area so they were busy). The ground level retail space isn't very big (and has a small balcony area) so for the basement to be larger than the ground level retail wouldn't surprise me considering how many recruiters kept coming up.
PSG just out grew the space probably.
But in the video when it pans down into the hole, you see a door to an empty office-like room and an area outside. (hallway). So its probably connected to the PSG space.
Interesting, I truly had no idea, but makes sense now thinking about the clown car recruiters...
Actually
PSG moved to smaller but more visible digs at 155 Fed.
The funny thing about a lot of these under sidewalk spaces is that the BRA went after some building owners about 20 years ago looking for money since they had space which were under sidewalks, even though the city greenlighted the buildings, back from the 1890's to the 1930's where this (for coal chute purposes) was an issue.
Did Boston ever have any of these?
Sidewalk elevators for shipping/receiving before truck loading docks became more standard. The area under the sidewalk was used for loading and unloading them.
The Back Bay seems a likely location, but I haven't seen any in action around here. I have seen them in other cities.
The info with the video says that this particular model was made in Ware MA.
Never seen them in use...
...but there are similar metal doors embedded in the sidewalks outside the BPL and the CVS on Boylston Street in Copley Square.
Those Are T Escape Hatches
There are emergency exits all along the tunnels.
There is one right at the intersection of D and Dorchester Avenue too and one at Welles Ave south of Shawmut. The T used to have signs on some of them.
Red Line emergency exit in Cambridge. 200 steps to climb!
A few months ago, I found this one open on Mass. Ave. between Harvard and Porter squares.
this
comment thread is pure gold.
UPDATE
It appears that a certain local agency drilled holes for a sign.
They saw the damage and quietly walked away.
There is metal panel and a caution cone over the hole now and the building manager, obviously frustrated, is working on a solution.