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Stony Brook History Website

I've written previously about the Stony Brook, which runs through Jamaica Plain, but now there is a website devoted to its history.  Stony Brook: Gone But Not Forgotten is a fascinating look at one waterway throughout Boston's history.  As I wrote in a earlier post, "when we envision what Boston looked like one hundred or two hundred years ago, we generally neglect to add in the topographical features that have been obscured by development.  Numerous waterways, some large, some small, drained into Boston Harbor, or the Neponset and Charles Rivers.  For the most part, these waterways have been filled in, paved over, or diverted into sewers.  Being diverted into a sewer was the fate of the Stony Brook."  Stony Brook: Gone But Not Forgotten helps uncover that history and is well worth visting.

The Gas Street Lamps of Jamaica Plain--Union Avenue

Gas Street Lamp, off Union Avenue, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, 14 October 2006.  Click to enlarge (Photo copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

When people think of gas street lamps in Boston, they tend to think of Beacon Hill.  But in the pre-electric light bulb era (and even for some time after that) gas street lamps could be found throughout Boston and its neighborhoods.  Most of these gas street lamps were removed during the changeover to electric street lights, but a few have survived to the present day.  You'll generally find them in unusual places:  for example, a fire access path on Jones Hill in Dorchester has one and alleys and short streets designated "private ways" are other good places to look.  Wellesley Park in Dorchester has gas lamps on both sides of the park, lending charm to one of the city's most remarkable hidden neighborhoods.

Some of the gas street lamps of Jamaica Plain have been identified, with pictures available here.  Others throughout the city are undocumented, but well loved and prized by neighborhood residents.  The one in this picture illuminates a path leading off of Union Avenue in Jamaica Plain to a house tucked in back of two houses facing Union Avenue.  The lamp now sits on private property and has been adopted by the current owners of the property.

If the photograph above makes you think of another image, you're probably thinking of Rene Magritte's L'Empire des Lumieres (Empire of Light) which can be viewed at the Guggeheim Museum in New York City.

Do you know of a hidden gas street lamp in Boston?  Email me the details.

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Mission Hill? Jamaica Plain? It's All Roxbury to Me

The Third Decade writes: "For years people have debated where the boundary between Roxbury and Jamaica Plain is over in the Mission Hill area, although most people settle on Heath Street as the line. Recently, however, I've noticed that more websites have either been listing Mission Hill as its own neighborhood or as part of Jamaica Plain."

Boundary issues have been something of a recurring theme here at the City Record and Boston News-Letter.  I've written about the Roxbury/South End border,  about why boundaries matter, and the description of the Town of Roxbury in 1821.  I'm going to tackle the Mission Hill/Roxbury/Jamaica Plain issue today.

First, Mission Hill is not part of Jamaica Plain.  Look at the two names.  One has "hill" in it, the other "plain".  These two geographic features are mutually exclusive.  Jamaica Plain was that part of Roxbury which flattened out from Fort Hill and Mission Hill, from the Stony Brook over to Jamaica Pond.  Heath Street is pretty good boundaryline between Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain because it is the old road circling the hill, much like Cambridge Street and Charles Street help define Beacon Hill, or Hancock Street, Pleasant Street, and Stoughton Street define Jones Hill in Dorchester.  In other words, you know when you're stepping off of a hill.

I think the confusion stems from the fact that at one time Roxbury encompassed Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, and what is now West Roxbury, among other areas.  West Roxbury broke off from Roxbury in 1851 and became a separate town, only to be annexed to Boston in 1874.  Jamaica Plain never was a seperate town.  It was a neighborhood within Roxbury, just like Mission Hill. 

Parker Street is another boundary street for Mission Hill, Jamaica Plain, and Roxbury.  The portion of Parker Street which used to run between Heath and Centre Streets in Roxbury was laid out in 1662 and named "from Heath Street by John Parker's to Worcester turnpike (now Tremont Street) and across same to Mill-Dam (now Beacon Street) May 9, 1825.  In other words, Parker Street provided the connection from the Mill Dam in the Back Bay to Centre Street in Roxbury, which was the main road to Dedham which made Parker Street a crucial part of the early Boston area road system.  Later, Parker Street was bisected by Huntington Avenue, with the portion going from Huntington Avenue to Kenmore Square becoming Hemenway Street in 1898.

So yes, Mission Hill qualifies as its own neighborhood but only the wishful thinking of real estate agents makes it part of Jamaica Plain.  It is part of Roxbury, just like Jamaica Plain.

Update:  Jon from Bostonist asks, "So historically JP is part of Roxbury - but not now, right? Mission Hill and JP qualify both as separate neighborhoods? The thing that confuses me the most is why the USPS can't get with our system of neighborhoods and actually use zip codes that are reflective of the neighborhood they're in." 

JP will always be a part of Roxbury but people don't think of it that way.  Like Dorchester, JP has its own separate system of sub-neighborhoods. Mission Hill does not, which I think tends to make people believe that JP is or was its own town at some point in history.  It is important to note that our current zip code system came into place in 1963 and the zip code boundaries had more to do with the location of the post offices within the areas defined by zip codes, not the historic boundaries of neighborhoods--this seems to be pretty good overview of zip code assignation.

Link: The Third Decade: The Incredible Shrinking Roxbury.

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Dudley Street Elevated

Dudley Station Elevated Terminal, Boston, Mass c. 1914.  Click to enlarge. (Image copyright the City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

Earlier this week I posted a picture of the Hotel Dartmouth, which is visible on the right side of this postcard.  Dudley Station, designed by Albert Wadsworth Longfellow, built by the Boston Elevated Railway Company, and opened in 1901,  no longer serves as a rail transit hub for streetcar lines and the elevated train.  In the early 1990s the elevated station canopy was lowered and moved to its current location to provide shelter for bus passengers.  If you look closely at the postcard you see the sign "J. S. Waterman & Sons Undertakers" painted on the side of the building.  As of a few years ago one could still see the sign, faded, but visible.

The Library of Congress American Memory Collection (search for "boston elevated railway) has photographs and documentation of the Elevated done by HABS/HAER, including the following interior shot of Dudley Station:

Interior view of Dudley Street station Mainline Northbound platform-looking North.  Click to enlarge.
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Historic American Buildings Survey or Historic American Engineering Record,  Reproduction Number HAER MASS, 13-BOST, 127-36

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Massachusetts Historic Preservation Conference--Dudley Square, Roxbury

Corner of Warren and Dudley Streets, Roxbury, c. 1895 from Picturesque Boston's Southern Suburbs.  Click photo to enlarge.  (Image copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved).

This view of Dudley Square c. 1895 shows the recently renovated Palladio Hall (to the far right), Hotel Dartmouth (center) and the area where the B-2 police station now stands (to the left of Dudley Street).  You can read about the history and renovation of the Hotel Dartmouth here, in a blog post from the Affordable Housing Institute.

The 2006 Statewide Historic Preservation Conference, "Serving Neighborhoods through Preservation" will be held Wednesday, 20 September 2006 from 8:30 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. at the University of Massachusetts-Boston Campus Center.  This looks to be a good one and I'm especially interested in the panel presentation on the work being done in Dudley Square and John Eliot Square in Roxbury.  To see Peter Vanderwarker's photos of Dudley Square and the Hotel Dartmouth building in 1988 and 2006 click on the conference link.

On a related note, Massachusetts Archaeology Month is October 2006 with dozens of archaeology related events throughout the state.  For more information, click here.

Link: MHC: Massachusetts Historic Preservation Conference.

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How Soon is Now? Or, Where's the South End Subway?

View of Washington Street in 1948 and "soon" from Surging Cities published in 1948 by the Greater Boston Development Committee. (as always, click photo to enlarge)

Attention:  If you really, really hate the Silver Line and wanted to have light rail on Washington Street, either stop reading here or take your blood pressure medication.

Surging Cities is a remarkable document, a textbook published in 1948 for secondary school students which looks at how cities have grown in the past and the prospects for Boston's future. It is filled with maps, charts, and photographs--the I-95 and Inner Beltway make an appearance, the need for urban renewal is discussed (watch out West End!), housing projects are promoted.  Some of it seems quaint now--Filene's helicopter delivery of packages never really took off (no pun intended)--and some of it seems downright crazy, like the plans for South Bay.  What really caught my eye this morning were the projects listed under the heading "Most Urgent Transit Projects" and the photo above of Washington Street. 

From Surging Cities:

"When the Legislature created the M.T.A. [Metropolitan Transit Authority], it specified that the following projects should be given first attention:
    (a) Enlargement and improvement of the Scollay Square, Park Street, and Boylston Street stations and the construction of two additional tracks between Scollay Square and Park Street stations.  At present, there are four tracks between North Station and Scollay Square; and four tracks from park Street to Boylston Street.  As the section between Scollay Square and Park Street has only two tracks, it is now the most serious bottleneck in central Boston.  The above improvements were authorized by the 1948 legislature at an estimate cost of $11,500,000.
    (b)  The removal of the elevated structures and the construction of subways in their place.  The 1948 Legislature authorized $19,000,000 for extension of the Washington Street Tunnel to a point near Cedar Street, Roxbury and for tearing down a long section of the Washington Street El.
    (c)  Extension of rapid transit service service as far as Braintre by the use of the lines of the Old Colony Railroad, which is one of the steam railroad commuting lines that has been losing money.  Notice of suspension of its service has been given.  Various alternate plans to meet this situation are being considered.
    (d) Extension of the Cambridge Subway to a point near Porter Square.  This proposal is described in more detal in the previous section "Plan of the Rapid Transit Commission." [I may try to post this later]

Projects A, C, and D were ultimately completed. [Update:  Ron Newman comments below that Project A wasn't completed and I have no reason to doubt him.  So C and D which serve non-Bostonians get built but the projects within the City of Boston don't get built.  I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist but this is worth further investigation.]  But in 1948 the Legislature authorized $19,000,000 to put a subway under Washington Street through the South End and into Roxbury past Dudley Square.  The only questions that remain are (a) What happened to the money? and (b) Where's our subway?

The map below shows where the elevated line would have gone underground, at approximately the intersection of Cedar Street and Washington Street in Roxbury, before reaching Dudley Square as one headed toward Boston.

Update:  A commenter below asks if this wasn't just a simple planning change.  It wasn't, at least in my reading of it, for a number of reasons. According to Surging Cities, money was appropriated for the project, but was never spent. I find this odd. This tunnel was listed as an "urgent project" and was part of the reason for the creation of the MTA, yet the old elevated didn't come down until almost 40 years later.  No one in 1948 envisioned the Orange Line in its present location--they envisioned a highway.  For one reason or another, the project never got built and now I'm going to have to do the research and figure out why not.  From a purely engineering standpoint, Washington Street was the only logical place to put a subway since it was the only part of that area of Boston which had historically not been underwater.

The 1948 Highway Plan (a fascinating read) included a number of projects which were never built for a number of reasons--political, financial, etc.  When the I-95 plan was stopped in 1970 or 1971, work had already progressed to clear part of the corridor where the Orange Line now runs (a corridor which was, at least out to Forest Hills, part of a historic rail corridor anyway so putting a train line through there certainly wasn't a new idea).  The elevated line along Washington Street ultimately came down around 1987 or so.

The idea of a highway coming into Boston from the southwest is even older than 1948.  The 1930 Thoroughfare Plan has a highway running parallel to Blue Hill Avenue through Roxbury and then along where Albany Street runs through the South End to the South Station Area. There was also a Roxbury Crosstown road which would have run through North Dorchester, the Dudley Square area, and on through the Fenway.

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Centre Streets in Boston and a Modest Proposal

I wrote up a few preliminary thoughts about the call to change the name of a portion of Centre Street "Avenue de las Americas" and argued that using "Avenue" as part of the proposed name just didn't sound right from a historical perspective.  After re-reading the history of Centre Street in Roxbury and West Roxbury, I'm now convinced that renaming Centre Street is a bad idea not only in terms of the history, but for planning and wayfinding purposes as well.

The Centre Street in Roxbury/Jamaica Plain is part of the historic road which stretched from the Roxbury meeting house (First Church in Eliot Square) to Dedham and on to Connecticut.  It survives almost intact: the missing piece is where Columbus Avenue breaks it, as seen in the map below:

Other than the one break, it continues all the way down to the Dedham Mall, where the name changes as it crosses into Dedham, close to where it intersects with Washington Street, the colonial era highway running out of Boston. 

Centre Street's current name helps with navigation through Boston.  Losing a street only to have to find it again is frustrating.  The current break in Centre Street is about six hundred feet long, so people can presumably pick up Centre Street again fairly easily by going down Columbus Avenue.  Renaming Centre Street in Jackson Square would make it almost impossible for one to find Centre Street in Jamaica Plain again. 

The name Centre Street also serves history by reminding us of the importance of First Church in Roxbury and of the historic colonial road pattern.  I also think Centre Street is a good name because the current stretch of Centre Street between Jackson and Hyde Square is, after all, one of the most important centers for Boston's Latin community.  Rename that stretch of Centre Street "Centro Street" and give Jackson and Hyde Square new names to provide emphasis at either end of the renamed section.  There should be a Park de Las Americas and a statue of Simon Bolivar as well.

I look forward to seeing the flags of many nations along the street.  The image I have in my head is of Childe Hassam's flag paintings.  Hassam, a Dorchester native, painted dozens of pictures of flags lining the avenues of New York City during World War I and its aftermath.  Below is Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain, 1918 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art:

Note:  I should add that Boston being Boston, people might simply believe "Centro Street" to be a typographical error (or worse, just a misspelling) given the number of street signs in Boston which are incorrect.

Centre Streets in Boston

Streets named "Centre" have long been popular in Boston and the towns which were eventually annexed by the city.  Several of the Centre Streets have disappeared: the one in Boston's North End which ran between North and Hanover Streets has been lost, another Boston Centre Street which opened into Cambridge Street was renamed Anderson Street in 1861.  East Boston's Centre Street became Haynes Street in 1868 (the annexation of Roxbury spurred street name changes throughout Boston) and South Boston's Centre Street was renamed Ward Street in 1855.  Brighton had a Centre Street, at least on paper, in the mid-19th Century.

The three remaining Centre Streets are in Dorchester, Roxbury/Jamaica Plain, and West Roxbury.

Centre Street, Dorchester, 1837; from 608 Washington Street, opposite Norfolk Street, to 411 Adams Street; mistake in locatoin (road from Plymouth to Lower Road) rectified, April, 1804; named from Upper Road (now Washington Street) to Lower Road (now Adams Street), March 11, 1840.

Centre Street, Roxbury and West Roxbury, 1825; from Eliot Square to Dedham line; that part of this street lying in Roxbury, and to South Street in West Roxbury [ed. note: the boundary  between Roxbury and West Roxbury ran across Centre Street in Jamaica Plain] laid out, January 19, 1662; called the Middlepost Road from Boston to Hartford; altered from Colonel Draper's through Dedham to Dover line, May, 1795; called "Old road to Dedham" 1823; "Road from the parting stone by J. Riley's store, by Rev. Mr. Gray's meeting house, by Captain Winchester's to Rev. Mr. Flagg's meeting house, and on to Dedham line"; named Centre Street, May 9, 1825; called Boston Road, 1833; name of part in West Roxbury changed to Austin Street, May 3, 1852; name of Austin Street changed to original name of Centre Street, Dec. 2, 1861.

Preliminary Thoughts on Avenue de las Americas

I've been asked for my thoughts on renaming a portion of Centre Street in Jamaica Plain to Avenue de las Americas.  I should note that I'm on vacation and away from my library, so some of the dates I use below may be a bit off.  I don't mind renaming streets (and getting rid of a little more of Centre Street in JP to lessen confusion with the other Centre Streets in Boston might be a good thing) but the proposed name, Avenue de las Americas, strikes me as being all wrong. 

First and foremost, Boston is a city of streets--for the first two hundred years or so of Boston's history there weren't avenues--just streets, lanes, paths, alleys, passages, etc.  The major streets in Boston today graced with the surname "Avenue" are primarily old highways/toll roads/turnpikes which were created very early in the 19th century, like Dorchester Avenue, Blue Hill Avenue; a major street running through a development, like Commonwealth Avenue (all of the other Back Bay Streets  in the grid are "streets"); or are a product of late 19th century planning, like Huntington Avenue, Massachusetts Avenue, and Avenue Louis Pasteur. 

This isn't to say that there weren't streets named "Avenue" in the mid-19th century in Dorchester and Roxbury--Savin Hill Avenue is an example--just that they were far outnumbered by "Streets".  "Avenue" begins to become more popular in Boston about the same time as "Road", which starts to appear in fashionable Brighton neighborhoods in the late 19th century.  Jones Hill in Dorchester, which began to be subdivided in the 1870s, has Sawyer Avenue, Everett Avenue, Cushing Avenue, and Downer Avenue.  True antiquarians will note that "road" appears in Dorchester in the 17th Century, with the Upper (Washington Street) Road and Lower (Adams Street) Road.  In other words, "Avenue" just doesn't sound right when applied to Centre Street, a name which indicates its importance as a colonial road.

Avenue of the Arts, which has been applied to Huntington Avenue makes sense, given both the cultural institutions along it and width of the street--it feels like an avenue, or even a boulevard, a word mostly absent from Boston, with Seaport Boulevard being a noteworthy exception.  On the other hand, "Avenue de las Americas" gives one certain expectations of grandeur which Centre Street can't hope to fulfill.  I'm all for a statue of Simon Bolivar, who deserves to be more widely known, and I think a Park de las Americas is a great idea. 

Perhaps there is another Spanish word that conveys the sense of a marketplace/community meeting place/neighborhood which would sound more lively than Avenue De Las Americas, which makes me think of New York City.  Las Ramblas in Barcelona gives me a sense of action and activity and life--what word describes the neighborhood that is the pulse of Boston's Latin community?  Why not rename Hyde and Jackson Squares, instead of the street connecting them?

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Update:  I've seen it written in a couple of places that I think it is a bad idea to rename Centre Street.  To be clear:  I don't think renaming is a bad idea.  I think incorporating "Avenue" into the new name is a bad idea, for the reasons I've mentioned above.

Boston Baseball: The South End Grounds

Detail of Map Showing the South End Base Ball Grounds, 1899.  Click map to enlarge. (Image copyright the City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

My post on the Congress Street Base Ball Grounds prompted a few emails inquiring about the location of the South End Base Ball Grounds, which can be seen at the center of the map above.  A few other notes about this map:  it shows Chickering Station, a reminder that the piano factory at that location was large enough to warrant its own railroad station.  The Ruggles Street Baptist Church moved to the corner of Park and Beacon, and a number of other streets were lost when Melnea Cass Boulevard was created.

The 1902 lithograph below, from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection, shows the area near the South End Grounds looking towards downtown Boston.  The Beach and Clarridge manufacturing plant was located at the corner of Columbus Avenue (the street running along the right side of the view) and Camden Street, a few blocks down from the South End Grounds.

A detail from the lithograph shows the Huntington Avenue Base Ball Grounds, where the Boston American League team won the first World Series (as the Pilgrims--they didn't become the Red Sox until 1907).  At the time of this lithograph, the Boston team was known as the Somersets, after Charles Somerset, the first owner of the franchise.  One can also see the Fenway, in a bit of artistic license.

The Mill Dam and Boston's Back Bay, 1821

Map of the Mill Dam and the Back Bay from John Hales' A Survey of Boston and Its Vicinity (1821) (Image copyright The City Record and Boston News-Letter, all rights reserved)

I have previously written about Boston surveyor John Hales and his useful 1821 book A Survey of Boston and Its Vicinity; Shewing the Distance from the Old State House, at the Head of State Street, to all the Towns and Villages Not Exceeding Fifteen Miles Therefrom; Also the Intermediate Distance from One Place to Another, Together with a Short Topographical Sketch of the Country.  Today's post shows a map of the completed Mill Dam from the same book.  What follows is Hales' description of the Mill Dam.  The letters in the text refer to points on the map, so click on the map to see a larger version.

"The Mill Dam a. b. c. d. e. just completed by the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation [note: initial construction was approved in 1814], from Beacon Street in Boston to Sewall's Point in Brookline, is composed of solid materials and made watertight; its surface is horizontal about three or four feet above high water mark, fifty-feet in width and one mile and a half in length. This Dam cuts off and incloses about 600 acres of the southerly part of the Back or Great Bay, (over which the tide before regularly flowed) and renders the water that is now admitted therein subservient and manageable.

At c. f. there is a cross dam running from the main dam to Gravelly Point, which is also water proof, and divides the part of the Great Bay cut off by the long dam into two parts; the westerly part containing about one hundred acres is intended as a full basin, or reservoir of water.  The easterly part contains about five hundred acres and is intended as an empty or receiving basin.

In the long dam at b. there are five pair of flood doors grooved in massy piers of hewn stone, each pair moves from their opposite pivots towards the centre of the aperture on a horizontal platform of stone until they close in an obtuse angle on a projected line cut on the platform from the pivots in the piers to the centre of the space, with their angular points northerly on the open or uninclosed part of the bay. The object of these doors is to close against the flow of tides and prevent the passage of water into the empty basin, consequently at high tide that basin will be empty, with the exception of the waste waters received, during the flow of the tide, from the full basin after having supplied the mills, which is calculated will not rise to a height sufficient to impede the power necessary to carry the works.

At d. there are six watertight sluices leading into the full basin. These sluices are to open every tide when the water in the outer or uninclosed part of the bay hath the ascendancy over the water in the full basin, in order to admit the flow of tide into the reservoir, and to be closed immediately at high water; by this process the full basin will be left full of water every tide as high as the tide has flown, if so high it is needed. 

Gravelly Point in Roxbury is intended as the scite [sic] whereon mills or factories are to be erected, somewhat in the line g. g. g. between the full and receiving basins, and sluice ways are to be built from the full basin at h. h. & c. of a size sufficient to admit so much water as will move and keep in motion the power contracted for. The waste water therefrom falling into a raceway which conducts it to the empty basin, and this empty basin discharges itself every tide at low water through the flood doors, so that the reservoir is filled at high water and the receiving basin emptied at low water, by which means there will be a continual supply of water through the sluice ways from the full basin, to set and keep at all times in motion the mills, factories, or other water powers that are erected between the basins, and there will be a sufficient fall from the water in the full basin to the water in the receiving basin to prevent the mills from choaking [sic], so that the powers may with propriety be said to be perpetual.

There are two roads leading from the long dam, one west by north to the Brighton road, the other south-westerly to the Punch Bowl village in Roxbury, both whereof considerably shortens the distance to Boston from the west and south-westerly parts of the country, and there is one road leading from the short dam to Roxbury Street."

Be sure to read other posts about John Hales: Circuit Round the Town of Boston and how to gauge one's walking speed along Boston Common.

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