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Great stuff
Well done, Adam - terrific photos and history.
FYI: As the Casey Arborway project nears completion, landscapers and stone masons are currently creating a "dry riverbed" surface feature indicating the course of Stony Brook as it crosses the Arborway. It begins south of the Arborway and just east of Hyde Park Ave (near the Residences at Forest Hills apartment complex under construction in the former LAZ parking lot) and runs diagonally north across the median towards the bus yard. There will eventually be a historical marker telling some of its history.
Wow, that's cool
Ghost Arroyos does something similar with the hidden waterways of San Francisco, but on a less permanent basis.
And thanks for the kind words!
Hiding in Casey Arborway map
You can spot the Stony Brook landscape feature hiding under the trees in this rendering:
http://arborwaymatters.blogspot.com/2014/10/casey-arborway-halloween-tre...
Fabulicity !!!
Too bad the Globe doesn't write so many interesting and informative articles, intelligent people might read it again.
This is so awesome
I was just thinking about this the other day when I was driving up Enneking Parkway.
I've always thought it would be a cool project to mark where the underground rivers flow with blue lines on the sidewalks above.
Great job on this post and research.
Thanks!
I have to admit, I became a bit obsessed with this topic (ask my wife and daughter) - I don't think I've ever spent so much time researching something, I just kept finding more and more interesting stuff, which would lead me to yet more interesting stuff (including what might be my next research topic - the old Charles River seawalls).
It's also kind of amazing how much material related to this is available online. I thought I'd have to spend some serious time with microfilm at the BPL to read newspaper accounts, but it turns out the BPL gives library-card holders access to a number of online newspaper databases, and they have search tools and everything (the databases are actually available to any Massachusetts resident - if you don't have a BPL card, or don't know your card PIN, you can get an "e-card" that will let you in).
Great job Adam !!!
Too bad the City doesn't make certain other things so easy to find and accessible........
Like Mayor Curley's desk?
Heh, I din't do it.
Daylight stony brook
Environmental remediation, daylight the river.
Canterbury Brook
Turns out there's roughly 4,500 feet of it that still flows wild. And given that a big part of the old state-hospital grounds under which its conduit flows is now a nature center, might be interesting to look at daylighting there (of course, the issue would be cost).
Bussey Brook through the rhodedendrons at the Arboretum is also really cool - you really feel more like you're in a mountain glen than in Roslindale (nothing against Roslindale ...).
You can actually still see it
You can actually still see it in a parking lot in the JP section between green st and stony brook along with don't dump drains into charles signs, where it flows almost entirely under parking lots, the area was rezoned to allow more development in the recent plan neighborhood plan from the BPDA, should have included day lighting it, would make for a really nice park that could tie into the existing SW corridor.
'Daylight the river'
OK, so how's this for a curveball...it's been covered for a century. What are the odds that fish and other aquatic thingies have adapted to low (or no) light conditions? We may have our own species of blind crayfish here. Sonar kibbies. Painted turtles that are unpainted because, well, no light.
All because of AG's well researched post.
I propose we give the sonar kibbie the Latin name (um, I ain't Sumo prime) Pisces Adamus Gaffinus.
They aren't trapped under there
The water flows, and they can swim.
really?
i dont know enough to say but how many fish really would be able to traverse this? miles of pipe.
Old Haffenreffer barrels too!
Old Haffenreffer barrels too!
Legends based in truth
I may have commented before that family history (oral) stated that my great-grandfather was a laborer for a time on the Stoney Brook projects and he noted that in places it was big enough to run a horse and cart through it. The images bear this out.
Also as you can see the state-of-the-art in those days was stone, brick, and mortar and while that may have allowed for a majority of channeling of the water, over time the earth will shift and settle so it can cause leaks to happen. If you trace some of the tunnels now with modern satellite maps you can still locate some interesting sets of trees that follow nearly straight lines. The roots fo these trees are following the water leaking underground from the tunnels.
I'd also caution that we not accept any specifics on location based on these old maps since survey marks may have moved and streets shifted over time. Also along with the major project there were also additional smaller feeders that drained into the larger tunnel system. Based on what I have learned from past generations and family stories the variance could be several hundred feet or more.
Yep, things move
In 1981, the MBTA had about 600 feet of the conduit south of Tremont Street (not sure exactly where) moved roughly 50 feet to make way for the new Orange Line.
I Saw It
My dad took me over there, right around Ruggles Street on a Sunday AM and we snuck onto the construction site and looked into the opening. It was right next to where police headquarters is now.
At least they wrote it down.
I heard a story in the eighties from a BWSC guy about pipe work on Poplar St near the golf course.
They were looking for the water pipe and, well, it ain't there. They had the blueprints, but...so they called an old retired guy. He knew, said basically, 'We moved it because we hit ledge.'
They asked about noting it and he just shrugged his shoulders...'didn't think we had to'...
Amazing post!
I'm only half-way done reading this amazing post, great stuff. Wanted to quickly share a map I tried to make years ago in tracing the conduits of the Muddy River and Stoney Brook. This was the best tracing I could come up with: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1b6cxzrc2sjSqvztMoWv6oN-tlPc&ie...
And here's a video of someone walking up Goldsmith Brook: https://vimeo.com/37870115
What a great video!
Pairs with Adam's article perfectly. Delicious historical wonkiness plus vicarious video adventure equals an hour well-spent!
Thank you for sharing!
Your trace shows it close to
Your trace shows it close to the rear of Doyles, it used to be detectable , not sure now. It also fed Haffenreffer Brewery,and there was a pond at Roxbury Crossing where Station 10 was I think.
Great research
I read Mark Bulger's articles last year when I looking for background on the brooks. You have taken this to a whole new level. Terrific photos and maps. Thanks for writing this. I will go back and read it again (and again).
Interesting that as Stony Brook was being covered, the Muddy River was being designed by Olmsted.
Also interesting ...
Is that the city ignored the lesson of Stony Brook - if you're going to stick a stream in a tunnel, better make sure it's a damn big one - and so in 1996, we got a lot of rain and the Muddy River burst its banks where it entered a couple of conduits that were too small and flooded out the Green Line and knocked Kenmore station out for weeks. All the work the Army Corps of Engineers and contractors have done over the past few years was basically to keep that from happening again (in part by "daylighting" the river in front of Landmark Center).
Back to OG design
I have a book of Frederick Law Olmstead's projects and there many photos of the emerald necklace - one of which looks like a "new" picture of the recent day lighting that they performed on the muddy river by the Fens.
Honestly, it looks like they are going back to the original design - one hundred years later!
Muddy River II
work is almost finishing the planning stage. Stay tuned.
Muddy River
The section of the river near the Landmark Center used to be daylighted in the fifty's. The cause of the river flooding was the grating covering the tunnel entrance became clogged with tree branches and debris which caused the river to back up and overflow it's banks and flood the tracks then flow into Kenmore Station.
Crayfish used to thrive in the Muddy River near the Museum of Fine Arts just upriver from the Forsyth Gate.
Schools of Herring would come upriver to spawn in the spring.
This is really high quality
This is really high quality information. Can you think about putting this type of thing into some type of sidebar where people can find it in the future? I think this deserves more than just a single day's attention.
Hmm, good idea
Maybe I need a listing of the history-type stuff I've done ...
Yes.
Yes please.
You do interesting stuff, and having it accessible would be A Good Thing.
(Also, this was a really fascinating post. I just moved to Easton after living 14 years on Maplewood Street, so next time I'm up in the area, I'll have to check some of the specific places you mention out.)
A Brook in the City
The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run —
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.
-Robert Frost
Stony Brook
Fascinating history and material.
When I was growing up in Hyde Park, we thought of Stony Brook as the name for the streams winding through the George Wright Golf Course. The brook flows from near the 18th green, passing through some backyards on West Street before re-entering the golf course, then skirting the 17th fairway and the 12th green before spilling into a little pond near the 13th tee. From the pond, there's another stream bed that leads into the Stony Brook Reservation. I remember as a kid hearing that the brook went all the way to Texas--surely a tall tale.
I lived on the hill overlooking the golf course, going back almost 60 years ago. At the time there was another little stream in a wooded area not far from our house (somewhere between Asheville and Lodge Hill roads).
One of William Pynchon's descendants was the novelist Thomas Pynchon. In "Gravity's Rainbow," there's a fantastical part set in Boston that involves a journey through the sewer system. Reading about the underground waterway here brought that back to the surface.
I wonder if it feeds into Turtle Pond
Or maybe Stony Brook directly? In either case, you could certain call it part of the Stony Brook system (I think there's yet another little stream that may come in via a culvert under Washington Street from West Roxbury).
Stony Brook reservation got
Stony Brook reservation got the name becuase it is the origin of Stony Brook. All the little streams that run through the area eventually do drain into the brook system. The main drain for the system is at the beginning of Enneking Pkwy, near Gordon ave.
1886 Man Made Global Warming?
Great to know that there were fluctuations in weather and climate in 1886, long before the influx of fossil fuels.
Further proof "man made Global Warming" is a fraud that made divorced Al Gore a billionaire in his coastal mansion. Apparently not too worried about "sea level rise."
Check out February 2017
Near zero temps and then high 70s. With tornadoes.
Not much ice/snow to melt, either. Too warm for that.
Notice the shift?
WARMER.
Blue Hill Observatory Data
Nice bullshit, grampa.
Now lets look at some actual data going back at least as far as this flooding incident - like, 50 years earlier.
July 2018 was one of the hottest on record. Most of the hottest on record since the 1880s have been recent:
BHO Warmest July Mean Temperature (24-hr adjusted mean), deg F (1885-2018):
1) 75.1 in 2010
2) 74.9 in 1952
3) 74.1 in 1994
74.1 in 2013
5) 74.0 in 2011
74.0 in 2016
7) 73.8 in 1999
8) 73.6 in 2018
9) 73.5 in 1949
10) 73.2 in 2012
Now lets look at how the temperature has been rising since 1880 or so, and with an inflection upward in the last 15 or so years (as in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2016, 2018 all being hot years ...):
Give your "clever" stupidity act a rest. It isn't clever, and it is stupid.
This is indeed an example of weather
Not climate. Dumbass.
Climate (noun)
the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.
(emphasized the important part for you)
It might have been climate change related
Humans were pumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere from the dawn of the 19th century onward.
There is scientific evidence that it was changing the climate even then: https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-clarify-starting-point-for-human-...
A round of applause, everybody!
Wow, you discovered it sometimes rained a lot in the 19th century. Where would you like your gold star?
In any case, no further need to discuss global warming here; others have made the point that you don't really have a point, at least in this context.
So no replies necessary to your comment; I'll just delete them as, well, pointless.
Breweries
Thanks, Adam. This adds more detail to a lot of what I learned at Brew at the Zoo this weekend, which included a lecture on "Lost Breweries of JP and Roxbury."
For those interested in that part of the story: https://www.jphs.org/victorian-era/bostons-lost-breweries.html
Runs under my back yard
Off Wyvern St. In fact it is the border between Rozzie and JP’s Woodbourne area.
Great history!
A good way to follow the route of the Stony Brook Conduit through Roslindale, at least east of Hyde Park Ave., is on the City of Boston assessment maps, where the corridor is marked as Stony Brook Reservation. You can view the corridor pretty clearly, though it is not labelled, on the Boston Zoning map at http://maps.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/zoningviewer/
The Boston Water and Sewer Department owns much, but not all of the surface over the conduit; some of it has been sold to abutters with a conservation restriction.
This is great!
Thanks for putting this together.
What a fantastic article, with a fantastic amount of research.
I read it with much interest, and found it fascinating. Thanks for all the research, adam.
@_@
This is amazing. I vaguely remember that tunnel getting filled in but I had no idea of the history of the waterways. Mad props Adam!!
Under Boston
This is the best thing I've read in a long while. Thanks!
I learned about 30 years ago about the Stony Brook conduit running right next to the basement at Doyles. It's great learning about all these other details. Now I feel like exploring.
Daylighting
Great stuff! Just imagine daylighting the Stony Brook as it courses along Amory Street!
https://urbanomnibus.net/2013/11/daylighting-rivers-in-search-of-hidden-...
http://273aiv293ycr20z8q53p7o04-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploa...
We lived on Hubbard Street off the Southwest Corridor from 1993 until 2008. We didn't know about the existence of the Stony Brook until 1996 (I believe) when rains overwhelmed the storm drainage into the brook and our basement flooded.
https://stonybrookinboston
https://stonybrookinboston.blogspot.com/
Water rights or hydro
I'm curious - if some business wanted to use this water for some reason and they were adjacent to the tunnel, I wonder if they'd be allowed to tap into it?
Similarly, it would think that at a certain point fairly far into the system, there is probably not much debris - could a turbine be installed to capture hydroelectric energy?
Stony Brook thru Roslindale
I always thought the submerged Stony Brook came down from Turtle Pond by way of Washington St towards Roslindale Village. I once heard that the folks at Trethewey Bros (at corner of Kittredge and Wash St ) could hear the stream beneath their floor boards on very rainy days. I believed it because we live on Cliftondale St (off Albano St) at the top before it goes down hill toward Kittredge and many of the homes around here get water in their basements, some quite a bit (incl ours) when it rains alot. How could we get water in our basements living at the top of a hill? I summed it up to a tributary of the Stony Brook too close to our foundations. I guess this story posted by Adam dispels that myth!
Fantastic Read.
Thank you so much, you solved at least 3 "What are those things?" mysteries for me. What a great read!
Thanks!
Thanks! I know I used to think the Charlesgate gatehouse (the one you see getting onto Storrow from the Fenway) was an abandoned comfort station.