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Imagine something like this at Park Street

Old Boston trolley station

The folks at the Boston City Archives wonder if you can place this photo. See it larger.

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definitely

EDIT: the below poster is right, it's park street

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You've got some red line stops there, though. Unless during this time period some tracks went this route.

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That's when the Red Line was built to Harvard and there wouldn't have been a huge demand for cars going that way. Likely pre-1914, when the Boylston subway was extended to just shy of Kenmore and fewer cars (if any?) made runs from the portal by the Garden to Cambridge via the Harvard Bridge.

I'm wondering if "Newton Boulevard" was what we now call Commonwealth Ave. I can't think of any other boulevards in Newton.

And I'm surprised that there was headroom under these destination boards. Maybe some day soon we'll again have boards telling you what train is coming. (The T has promised real time Green Line will be done by year's end.)

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Tracks on Commonwealth Avenue between Packard's Corner and the intersection of Commonwealth and Chestnut Hill Avenues weren't laid until 1900 (can't remember exact date off the top of my head).

The Newton Boulevard Line went straight Beacon to Reservoir (now Cleveland Circle), took a right on Chestnut Hill Avenue, then a left of Comm Ave to the transfer station at Lake Street.

The absence of the Lake Street - Commonwealth Ave line dates it to between September 1897 and 1900.

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Tracks on Commonwealth Avenue between Packard's Corner and the intersection of Commonwealth and Chestnut Hill Avenues weren't laid until 1900 (can't remember exact date off the top of my head).

May 26th, 1900, near as I can tell from historical records I've seen.

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88 years and 10 months before I was born.

I know the date is published in the Boston Street Railway Association's book Tremont Street Subway: A Century of Service\

Now a shameless plug for the BSRA: Go visit their site at www.thebsra.org

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you can see the outer tracks going to the South End were still in use, and both sides of the station used to be connected in those days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boylston_%28MBTA_station%29#mediaviewer/Fil...

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We used to have a heckuva rail transportation system.

Now the MBTA/State doesn't even have the will to give us decent bus service in favor of double parking.

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...says the sign in back on the right. And it looks like the beginning of "To Public Garden" on the beam to the left of the destination sign.

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That is at Park St. , present day Green Line westbound tracks (the lines going to Cambridge referenced in the sign went via Boylston and Mass Ave.)

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at the southern end of the southbound/westbound platform.

It can't be on the northbound/eastbound side of Park, because the routes on the board are westerly.

It can't be Boylston because we can see the northbound/eastbound platform immediately on the opposite side unlike Boylston.

Additionally on the far left, there is open tunnel space, the four track section that still exists between Park and Boylston.

The only question I have is if this picture was taken between 1901 and 1908, when elevated trains ran through the Tremont Street Subway.

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I believe it. The staircase is too wide for the Boylston.

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Good point about the Boylston displacement.

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The station seems so much cleaner than now. Look at that clean floor!

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Given that all of the passengers were stepping through streets full of horse shit on the way down into the station, I highly doubt it was any cleaner than the current station on a regular basis.

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You forget that there used to be armies of guys washing the street and floors all day because of that. No minimum wage meant people would pay for the smallest of jobs to be done if needed and a lack of small appliances meant there was tons of mundane physical labor to be done every day.

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One sign tells you to board while the car is in motion, but the other two forbid you to do so.

What are they trying to pull?

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Actually, all the males in the photo are so groomed.

Does all this mad Movember style help date this photo?

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The Metropolitan started horsecar service from Tremont House (about a block north of Park Street) to Coolidge's Corner via Huntington and Longwood Avenues on December 1, 1884. Service had been extended to Allston via Harvard Avenue by September 30, 1889. (This extension was done by the West End, which had taken over the Metropolitan two years earlier.) The West End had planned to include the Longwood line in the initial round of horsecar line electrifications. Residents along Longwood Avenue, Brookline were supposedly anti- wires and poles. Boston residents along Longwood Avenue were down with electric traction. August of 1894 saw the electrification of the line almost up to the Boston-Brookline boundary at Muddy River. A few weeks and a new crossover later, and electric service was running from the Brookline town line to the Northern Depots. The West End immediately abandoned the Brookline portion of the route.

Transit service briefly returned to that section of Longwood Avenue in the 1970s when the MBTA started Route 594, The Brookline Minibus. It was a route that would not live long enough to see the election of Ronald Reagan.

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It's Boylston st. station

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Thanks for playing folks! Those of you who guessed Park Street Station are correct. The date is February 4, 1900.

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This is Park Street, on the outbound side (Looking towards Boylston), probably between 1897 and 1901 (When the el trains ran through and the outer platforms were three steps up on decking). The round desk is the information booth/newsstand. This was before the platforms were extended (I believe in 1918) and shows the old exit stairs that were removed in later years. The lighted destination board was added after the opening of the original subway, but I don't recall the year (It was mentioned in one of the Boston Transit Commission annual reports at the time), possibly 1897/98.

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