Only in Boston by Duncan J.D. Smith

96 Downtown & Chinatown–Leather District 43 The Earliest Subway System MA 02108 (Downtown/Theater District), the Tremont Street Subway at Boylston Station T Green Line B, C, D, E to Boylston There is a photo from the early 1890s showing a steam train on Trem- ont Street. Belching out smoke, it is running along an elevated railway, with Park Street Church and the Old Granary Burying Ground to one side. Fortunately the photo is a fabrication created by those opposed to such an insensitive plan. It was clearly a successful piece of propa- ganda because the problem of reducing traffic on busy Tremont Street was solved instead by building America’s first subway. Congestion in Boston was inevitable following the introduction in 1853 of the horse-drawn streetcar. Within a few years lines built by competing companies were snaking their way across the city. Only in 1885 were they all consolidated under one company, the West End Street Railway, which rolled out the first electric streetcar in 1889, powered by a generating station at 540 Harrison Avenue (South End). It was the congestion caused by these vehicles (on a street already busy with wagons and pedestrians) that created the need for a subway. Opened on September 1st 1897, the Tremont Street Subway is the world’s third oldest rapid transit tunnel after London (1890) and Budapest (1896). A so-called ‘cut-and-cover’ construction, it originally served five closely-spaced stations – Boylston, Park Street, Scollay Square, Adams Square, and Haymarket – and was accessed through portals in the Public Garden, Canal Street, and Pleasant Street. The portals and the three northernmost stations were all subsequently swept away as the system (and the city) developed. What remains of the Subway between Charles Street and Court Street is now preserved as part of the Green Line. To get a feel for the subway visit the two remaining stations at Boylston and Park Street. Although Park Street has been significantly altered below ground, it still retains its original Classical Revival en- trances at pavement level. Boylston does, too, but more importantly its curving platform below ground still follows its original configuration. Another survival from the original Subway is that the Green Line still operates trolleycars powered by overhead wires rather than the more modern cars used on the city’s other lines, which draw power from a third rail. More vestiges of Boston’s early streetcar system can be found