Recent comments
Boston Blogs Network
- Palin's a global-warming skeptic, too
- City of Boston: Election Department - Absentee Ballot
- 'I want to invite readers to remember Jane Swift'
- Watertown High School Girls Soccer - Raiders Jamboree 9/1/08
- Ron Fournier on the Palin pick
- Covering all the bases
- Palin's anti-science, anti-gay agenda
- 35th Boston Caribbean Carnival
- Arguing about the end of “Edgar Sawtelle.”
- Obamatini
There's a lot of interesting
There's a lot of interesting stuff down in the T tunnels. There was a whole "underground community" of people that investigate transit tunnels. When you have a transit system that's as old as ours, there are a lot of old abandoned stations from before the consolidation of lines and abandoned tunnels. It's like a window into the past.
Admittedly, doing that stuff during operating hours is particularly dangerous.
http://www.infiltration.org/transit.htm
Abandoned places on the T
Actually, there aren't that many abandoned stations. There is the old Haymarket platform that anyone on the Green Line can see headed to or from North Station, along with the bit of the old Harvard station visible from the Red Line. Other than that, you have some old bits of Broadway still intact, but not too much else.
It is worth pointing out that if you ever find yourself on the wrong side of a station, cursing the fact there is no way to walk between the inbound and outbound sides, keep in mind there probably is a way across.
Boylston, Chinatown and Symphony are three stations that were built to allow you to walk from one platform to another without crossing over the tracks. The risks posed by homeless people and thugs have kept the tunnels sealed - and there might be some ADA issues that would prevent them from ever being opened now.
I would have liked the T to have reopened the pedestrian tunnel leading from the Public Garden into Arlington station as part of the renovations. With modern CCTV, use of the much larger tunnel on the Berkeley side is once again viable, so why not allow for all four sides of the Arlington/Boylston intersection to have access?
The abandoned Chinatown headhouse
Or is that Essex Street?
There's also the remains of the Blue Line trolley platform at Government Center from when the Blue Line was a trolley.
And the world's most boring remnant is in the parking lot behind the Spring Street Cafe at Spring Street and the VFW Parkway, where you can see a concrete slab where people boarded the trolley back when Centre Street/Spring Street still had a trolley (to Forest Hills?). Speaking of trolley remnants, I'm partial to the old trolley power substation on Washington Street in Roslindale (alas, it's all boarded up so you can't peek inside).
More Ghosts in West Roxbury
Up the river from the concrete slab, they actually
used to harvest ice from Cow Island Pond in the
Charles River, near where the high school is now.
Check out this old map, top left corner for the
Highland Ice Company. Apparently, a spur of
the railroad that ran in parallel to Spring St.
cut towards CM, from in back of what would now
be Star Market:
communityheritagemaps.com/.../westroxbury30.html
Pretty cool maps.
That spur
Most cool!
You can see the remnants of the spur right on Spring Street, across from the Shaw's - one side of the train bridge that used to cross the street.
A couple years ago, I climbed up there and walked along the spur up to Baker Street. One guy spotted me, asked me what I was doing back there (a number of the residents had already begun claiming the land; I think they finally got it officially); another family had a train-crossing sign at the edge of their backyard. Aside from the remains of the bridge and the topography (it's still raised up from the surrounding land), though, there didn't seem to be any evidence there was ever a train line there - or, at least, there weren't any obvious tracks.
The end of the line
I think was in Dedham Square, basically right where Whatever They Call Rte. 1 These Days passes over that bridge past Washington Street. Until they built the new side of the bridge, in fact, there was a large retaining wall with an 1888 cornerstone. You can also still see part of what was probably a retaining wall for the tracks across the street, although it looks like it's falling down. And if you turn onto Eastern Avenue (the street on the side of the Staples), you'll cross over some old tracks.
West Roxbury rail lines.
I grew up a few blocks from there, off of Baker
and the Kilmer school. When I was a kid the trestle
actually crossed Spring Street. They tore it down
when they built the Spring Street Star Market.
There was also a trestle (for the same line) over
Baker, near current Johnson Street. Line ultimately
terminated in Dedham.
(Show of hands for those still awake...yeah, that's
what I thought.)
Apparently, in the late 1800's there was a major
commuter railroad station in West Roxbury
in back of the current Bay Sweets on Spring Street.
Let's hope these links work.
Let's hope these links work.
The original West Roxbury line went to Dedham Center, by way of the now-gone tracks that crossed Spring and Baker sts, as noted above. The spur track to the ice house is a different line that turned off after the station. The Highland Cooperative Ice Company can be seen here:
http://www.wardmaps.com/viewmap.php?map_id=1219
The spur for the Needham line and the ice company are shown branching off the Dedham line here:
http://www.wardmaps.com/viewmap.php?map_id=1221
There was a station at Spring street, across from the Star Market. You climbed some steps from Spring street where the bridge crossed the street.
There's a picture of the old Dedham station here:
good-times.webshots.com/...vhost=good-times
The station was where the town parking lot is now.
Some good old then and now photos
Along with abominations in the nostrils of the Lord
like Samuel Clemens and Henry Miller (are you listening,
Bob Joyce?) the WR Public library also has the following:
amazon.com/West-Roxbury-Anthony-Mitchell...
It's a walk through West Roxbury, where possible, with
photos of what it looked like back then, and what it
looks like now. Worth a few minutes after you're
done looking through the Phoenix and picketing
Gary's Liquors.
There are actually two
There are actually two abandoned Chinatown entrances (not including the emergency exit building in a Washington St. parking lot). There is one on Essex St. that most people miss unless they're looking for it, with another, very large entrance on LaGrange St. leading down to the Southbound platform. It's been preserved as an emergency exit that empties out just to the left of Centerfolds.
Pictures of the latter can be found at John Arico's gallery
They closed those? Man, I
They closed those? Man, I don't get out much any more. The last time I went into Chinatown, that's what I used.
There are two remaining
There are two remaining entrances on the Northbound side, and only one on the Southbound side.
You can see all three in this picture if you pan around.
One of the current northbound entrances to Chinatown station
used to instead be an entrance to the RKO Boston theatre (later called Boston Cinerama, Essex Cinema, and finally Star Cinema before it finally closed in 1986). This huge theatre is still sitting inside the 600 Washington-Essex building, empty and unused.
For a look inside the theatre, go here: http://cinerama.topcities.com/boston.htm
I guess nobody told Jackie Liebergott it exists, either
I'm honestly surprised Emerson hasn't snapped it up yet.
Thanks for the photos. I love shots of Boston from the mid-to-late 20th century. (anything from the '60s and '70s especially)
I wish she would!
but I suspect Emerson has its hands full with the Paramount-Bijou project across the street. If you know her, maybe you can point her at these pages.
Great photos old Essex St Station
When I was at Suffolk University in the late 70's,
I cleaned a string of banks in Boston
every evening as a part time job.
Would finish about 10pm, and the closest
Orange Line stop was Essex. No
thanks--I would go out of my way to
walk to Washington St. (now Downtown Crossing)
station.
Essex St. Station disgorged directly into
the Combat Zone back then. That was one
scary place to be at 10pm, getting on the
platform and then waiting for a train.
what about the old Orange Line?
I was gone when they rerouted the Orange Line, and didn't ride it much in the old days, but wouldn't there be some unused stations? Or were they all elevated, and taken down?
All elevated, all gone
But there is a tunnel segment visible before you arrive at New England Medical Center outbound. It is where the OL used to veer off into the portal leading to Washington St. It's about 150 ft long, and can't be used for anything given the way construction has built up the area in the 21 years since the Southwest Corridor opened. It's cheaper to keep it than demolish the thing.
There was a sealed, abandoned station on the line for about 20 years: New England Medical Center itself. The station was built at the same time as the hospital was in the late 1960s, with the idea that it would eventually be connected to the OL when it was eventually rerouted. Undoubtably saved a ton of money later on.
You'd be hard-pressed to find that kind of foresight anymore.
Hynes station
Also, why can't they reopen the Hynes station entrance that actually faces the Hynes?
Hynes Entrance
The T is afraid that bums will hang out in the passageway and cause a problem.
This doesn't seem to be a major problem in other passageways
such as the long pedestrian tunnel between State and Milk streets, or the one from Berkeley Street to the Arlington Street platform, or the one from Copley Place to Back Bay station.
but it is a problem at the
but it is a problem at the short, heavily used main tunnel at Hynes.
more on Hynes
I'd also like to see the exit-only iron maiden on Newbury Street replaced with a Charlie gate. It takes quite a while to get a line of people through that exit now.