More Camberford arcana

[dmaze]

So the T was unfriendly on the way home, and I just missed the bus connection at Sullivan. In spite of it being neither horribly cold, raining, nor snowing, I walked home from there anyways. And got distracted behind the Assembly Square Mall.

I've wondered for a bit what my neighborhood looked like, say, around 1950. Before 93 got put in and levelled a block along Mystic Ave. And there's some confusion around how actually various bits of road went. Observations:

• There's a block of McGrath Highway north of 93. It ends at Middlesex Ave., and dead-ends into the mall.
  
• There's Middlesex Ave. both south and north of the Mystic River; you could hypothetically label the section of 28 between Wellington Circle and the mall as Middlesex Ave. and have a continuous road. (But, there's not Mystic Ave. south of 93.)
  
• There's a block of Fellsway West between Broadway and Mystic Ave. in Somerville. Then 28 north of 93 is just plain Fellsway, until it splits into Fellsway West and Fellsway East again further north in Medford.
  
• A manhole cover on Middlesex Ave. just behind the mall says "Sewer, 1895" on it; the courthouse at Middlesex Ave. and the Fellsway is dated 1967. Most of the development in the triangle bounded by Mystic Ave., Middlesex Ave., and the Fellsway looks 1950's or newer. Ten Hills was built around 1915.
  

My current hypothesis is this: Middlesex Ave. was built first, going north from Mystic Ave. (then Middlesex Turnpike?) through Medford. Some time later, the Fellsway was built; probably the southern terminus of the Fellsway was initially Wellington Circle. I think Msgr. McGrath Highway was built a little before 93, but not too much before. (The section immediately north of the "trapezoid bridge" certainly looks like it plowed through an existing neighborhood, which was in style in the 1950's.) It connected to Middlesex Ave. There was some development around there. Then 93 got built and plowed through a block of Ten Hills; at that point, the current "Fellsway" between 93 and Wellington Circle was also built, giving us the modern road configuration.

Comments

Yay old maps of boston...

[(Anonymous)]

According to my old map of Boston (undated, but it shows the Sumner Tunnel, the airport, and does not show the Huntington Ave subway (it explicitly shows it as street-running), so between 1934-1941), The Fellsway starts in Somerville as Fellsway West/East to Mystic Ave, then becomes the Fellsway until it splits in Medford. Fellsway West runs from Medford into Stoneham and off the map. Middlesex ave in Somerville goes from Mystic and "ends" at the Fellsway, and then continues on the other side of the river. The section over the river is explicitly named Fellsway however on this map. (I have an older map I can scan and put in my ~/Public if you care...) There are a number of streets in the Mystic/Middlesex/Fellsway triangle, but I can't discern the amount of development. (Lousy lack of a personal collection of Sanborn atlases...)

-jdreed@mit