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A trolley hidey spot in old Boston
By adamg on Thu, 02/16/2023 - 12:28pm
The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this scene. See it larger.
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Newbury St!
355 Newbury, a few doors down from Newbury Comics, next to Tower Records.
First one I knew without thinking.
Current View
Good work!
;-)
Yup
This is the easiest one in a while.
Back in the day, transferring from a trolley in the tunnel at Hynes to one on Mass Ave did not require standing outside on a narrow curb breathing exhaust.
Since they want to know when, it's after April 22, 1950, which is when the line was converted to trackless, and there are signs "watch out for buses" although it could have been earlier when the double wire was already up but not yet in use (I think this had something to do with work on the bridge itself, and there was a gasoline bus interlude).
If you look closely in the photo, you see a "Fare 10 cents" sign. It could have been before Jan 28, 1950, when fares were increased to 15¢. But that may be for people who have already paid a fare on a local car and are transferring to rapid transit and would pay a higher fare, because needlessly complex fares on the T have been around for a long time. In any case, by late 1951, tokens were in use, so it's somewhere in the 1950 to 1951 time frame.
"The Beach"
I believe that is the area that has been referred to as "The Beach" for reasons unknown. For a while there was a subculture of youngish people who hung around there because they seemingly had nothing else to do, but they are gone now.
Yes, this was for transfers
Yes, this was for transfers between the Mass Ave trolley line and the subway. There used to be a structure over the Boston & Albany train tracks and a similar pair of openings at Boylston.
Yep, instant recognition
Yep, instant recognition for me, also for the first time. It really still looks just about the same.
EU Wurlitzer was next door on the Mass Ave side
it was an important destination for a generation of musicians from the late 60's to the 90's. Most people guessed that this building was an old barn. We were half right. It was an MTA Caah Baahn.
you must be my age.. newbury
you must be my age.. newbury comics and tower records as landmarks on newbs
Ok. But for folks under 40,
Ok. But for folks under 40, you're going to have to explain Tower Records....
I was there with my son a few months ago
He loves abandoned infrastructure. We also looked at where the former (and hopefully soon reopened) underpass beneath Mass Ave around the corner from this. In the end, he was more interested in the closed Boylston Street entrance to the Hynes Convention Center station. Lots of unused transit spaces in a one block area.
Massachusetts Upper...
There's an abandoned staircase from the eastbound platform of Hynes that leads to this long-disused surface station. Routes which used it include: the defunct Bus Route 54 to Bowdoin via Copley and Charles Street; the last streetcars serving Ipswich Street (through to Audubon Road, earlier to Brookline Village); the streetcar line to Dudley via Mass Ave and Washington; and the trackless trolleys from Harvard Square. Abandoned by 1964, the re-merger of the Harvard/Dudley Crosstown in 1962 made this loop surplus.
What's inside this building
What's inside this building now? Does the MBTA still own it? I know the doors behind where Naco Taco parks are open on rare occasions but I've never looked in there.
Looks like MBTA power station
The air-rights project over the Pike at this location has it mapped as an existing traction power station. The project, if all goes well, should be building a new entrance on Newbury in front of where these trolley tunnel doors were.
Are you sure?
I’m not so sure. IIRC, the Parcel 13 Peebles scope includes Mass Ave entrance relocation/improvements (e.g. a new, accessible entrance to the fare zone at Mass Ave), restoration of the westerly entrance/exit on Boylston by Dillions, as well as a vaguely-described connection to the Samuels Parcel 12 improvements of the underpass under Mass Ave from the westerly bus stop to the easterly LR entrance and bus stop.
I can’t find any reference that Parcel 12 or Parcel 13 projects included any remediation or renovation to the Newbury Street facade of the traction plant/old trolley building.
Hope so
It's listed in the 'Overview' slide (slide 17; link in previous post). Looks like it's one of the community benefits they are highlighting. But I share the skepticism: this entrance is not within their project site and there isn't much more detail, so it could be cut.
What we lost
I almost shed a tear every time I am reminded of how much we lost in terms of transit in this city. It used to be possible to get to a lot more places on trains and trolleys here and on top of that you probably had to wait a shorter time for it to arrive (sometimes considerably). We really went backwards in so many ways during the era of urban renewal and it will be a long time before we undo that damage.
As I often note
A lot of it is still there, buried under 2" of asphalt. Sometimes you can see the old tracks through the potholes.
I too am sadden it's gone. Although I suspect people in the 1930s-50s shed fewer tears when the routes got switched to busses which would have seemed to have some advantages.
Private ownership of cars by the masses seemed like a huge step forward to most people too. Why wait for a train or bus when a car was affordable? Why live in the dense, smelly city when you could have a "big" house with a yard in the suburbs and drive to work quickly on your own schedule?
They were wrong.
They were wrong and for all sorts of reasons. The suburbs are alienating, long commutes every day make people miserable and sap energy for everything else in your life, the average person now spends almost a million on their car over their lifetime, the climate and ecological consequences of sprawl are well known now, and the bus may be able to dodge a car parked in its lane but without dedicated lanes (which is what we should have given to the trolley lines instead of replacing them with busses) they still get stuck in traffic and it’s a lot easier to simply get rid of a bus line than it is to get rid of train lines.
Also simply looking at the other reply about Sullivan square and comparing what was there to what is now should clear up any confusion about what’s better.
Especially when you see some
Especially when you see some of the former stations that are occasionally featured by the Boston City Archives: Sullivan Square was a 'crown jewel' of the elevated, designed by a well-known architect, and it had ten platforms for streetcars, so you could connect easily to many destinations in the region. Today we would not use the words 'crown jewel' for Sullivan Square station. North Station, Back Bay Station, Dudley Station, and so many others all had similar histories: beautifully designed, and also providing so many transit connections.
Reminds me of Copenhagen
The interior shot kinda reminds me of the main train station in Copenhagen, which is a well respected architectural gem. Comparing this to what is at Sullivan now is genuinely heart breaking.
I shed a tear when the
I shed a tear when the original Dudley Station came down. I used to wait for the bus to school under the columns that held up the upstairs Forest Hills bound elevated. As long as it wasn't raining it was fine.
I think about this these days
I think about this these days when I'm in West Cambridge or Watertown and see the half-demolished trackless trolley wires. Why didn't anyone make a bigger protest about this rushed decision to permanently destroy this electric transit infrastructure?
2nd-most* annoying pedestrian experience in Boston
There's still a substantial sideways slope on the sidewalk which is particularly annoying when there's ice. And probably quite hazardous year round to pedestrians who don't know it's there. But hey, cut the city and the state/MBTA some slack, they've only had well over half a century to solve the problem.
A few years back they had a bidding process for that concrete space and I thought Clover or somebody had come up with a plan to cantilever or otherwise jerry-rig a bricks-and-mortar outlet there. Needless to say that didn't work out and it's just a food truck parking spot now.
*THE most annoying pedestrian experience in Boston is just a block away - the stretch of Boylston Street east of Mass Ave. on the south side, in front of the Berklee CoM. No crosswalks, ramps, or even a no parking zone to allow pedestrians to get across Cambria and St. Cecelia. So after you squeeze through parked cars you encounter curbstones that are twice as high as usual and which are now partially dislodged and falling into the gutter. On top of that, the road configuration consists of a gentle 22.5° angle that allows cars to peel off to the right at the last minute without a signal while they hunt for parking spaces at full speed. Truly a lethal mess. Again, there were promises a few years back that Berklee would do something about it (you'd think they'd at least want a ramp, since their bicycle parking is right there), then after that fell through the failed skyscraper plans were supposed to have completely redesigned and resurfaced the deck over the Pike and given us some lovely green space, blah blah blah. Attention Mayor Wu, that's easily one of the three or four most important intersections in the inner core of the city, could you please finally add a ramp and crosswalks?
That Cambria Street triangle
That Cambria Street triangle is an annoyance. But there's a fully ramped route if you go around two sides of the triangle on the south side of Cambria to St Cecila to Boylston, adding about 50 feet of walking.
There used to be a bus stop on the triangle with no ramped way to get there. But that problem got "solved" by removing it. There's still a Blue Bikes station.
I'd suggest some bigger annoyances: the lack of sidewalk on Stuart in front of Copley Place thanks to the Pike offramp, trying to cross North Washington at Beverly/Cooper, the sloped sidewalk and unnecessarily wide intersections on Charles St (aka Storrow) along Mass Eye and Ear/MGH, and the timing of every pedestrian traffic light along the Greenway.
Truest comment I have read in weeks!
I hope you don't remain anon.
The Answer
Thanks for playing, folks! This is indeed 355 Newbury Street at (then) Massachusetts Station. While the photo doesn't have a date on it, we have also dated it to circa 1950. You can see a high res view of the photo here: https://cityofboston.access.preservica.com/uncategorized/IO_c8f2c8d7-cec...
It's interesting to see all
It's interesting to see all the car-oriented businesses in the background: Complete Auto Service, Mobilgas, Garage, Amoco. Some parts of the city have gotten less car-oriented over the last few decades.