OGMSIONAL PIPERS OH THE HISTORY OF BOSTOH GOUEOE BOSTON COLLEGE'S STREETS Rev. Charles F. Donovan, S.J. University Historian May, 1983 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/bostoncolIegesstOOdono The stretch of thoroughfare from Lake Street up the hill past Alumni Hall, St. Mary’s Hall, and Bapst Li- brary did not carry the name Common- wealth Avenue until 1894. Before that it had been known both as Ward Street* and South Street.^ College Road, so dubbed in 1918 for obvious reasons, was formerly called South Street, though at different times in the nineteenth century it was also known as Brighton Road^ and Ward Street.^ Such changes in street names should not surprise anyone familiar with local tradition: early Boston had four dif- ferent names for different pieces of the same thoroughfare, the present Wash- ington Street, running from Dock Square to the South End: Cornhill, Marlborough, Newbury, and Orange Streets. In honoring the republic’s first president the town fathers shifted three of the original street names to new locations. Until the last decade of the nine- teenth century the principal access to Newton from the east north of Beacon Street was Ward Street. An 1830 street map in the Jackson Homestead shows Ward Street running from its present westerly terminus at Center Street to the Brighton line, right past the future site of Boston College. An 1874 map shows South Street originat- ing at the juncture of Beacon and Ham- mond Streets, meeting Ward Street at the northwest corner of Amos Law- rence’s farm, where Bapst now stands, then turning east and sweeping down the hill to Brighton. South Street did not stop at the Brighton line but con- tinued past the Evergreen cemetery, known earlier as the Congregational cemetery. The present South Street, between Commonwealth and Chestnut Hill Avenues, is undoubtedly the last remnant of the route that once brought traffic south from Brighton to Brook- line via South and Hammond Streets. Downtown Commonwealth Avenue emerged as one of the topographical triumphs of the filling of the Back Bay, starting in the 1860s. By the 1880s with enlightened help from the landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted the impressive boulevard had pushed as far west as the juncture of Beacon Street, the Brighton Road, and Punch Bowl Road, the original name of Brook- line Avenue, so called because it led to the Punch Bowl Tavern in Brook- line Village.^ The juncture of these thoroughfares is now Kenmore Square. In 1887 the name Commonwealth Avenue was given to the section of Brighton Road^ from Kenmore Square to Malvern Street, where Brighton Avenue now starts, and to the road left from Malvern to Chestnut Hill Avenue^ which at that time was called Massa- chusetts Avenue.8 In 1895 Common- wealth Avenue was extended from Chestnut Hill Avenue (formerly Rockland Street) through property taken from the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and over the former South Street to the Newton line. [ 2 ] Boston’s pushing Commonwealth Avenue to the Newton line helped Newton planners to settle on the lo- cation of an east-west boulevard they felt was needed by the 1890s. A boul- evard commission was established and several alternate routes were pro- posed. The project was seen by some citizens as a business venture of large landowners and doubt about the qual- ity of connections for the proposed boulevard at the Boston end was cited as an argument against construction. Once Boston brought a similar boule- vard to Newton’s doorstep objections ceased and by 1896 Commonwealth Avenue reached the Weston line. The historian of Newton’s tercentenary, Henry K. Rowe, described the boule- vard commission’s ideas for the new thoroughfare: “The plan was to make a road one hundred and twenty feet wide where it was feasible, with two macadamized roadways each twenty- four feet wide. Between them a thirty- foot space should be set aside for a dou- ble streetcar track in the middle laid on a grassy surface. The enthusiasm over the possibilities of the electric car was being felt, and it seemed certain that a street railway over the new boule- vard would become popular and profitable.”^ Fortunately the commission’s plans were carried out in all details. We can thank the advent of the electric street- car for the lovely ribbon of grass from Lake Street to Route 128, happy haunt of joggers and dog-walkers. At the western end of Commonwealth Avenue on the site now occupied by the Marriott Hotel a recreation center, Norumbega Park, was opened in 1897 and a trolley line was run along the Avenue to Lake Street. Boston College [3] alumni of the ’20s and ’30s remember the open air trolleys that served the line in warm months. In those days the Lake Street terminal was considera- bly larger and of course busier than at present and because of the crowds drawn to Norumbega the terminal had something of a holiday atmosphere. The completion of Commonwealth Avenue in Newton and the introduc- tion of the streetcar line led to the de- velopment of the property in the area. An 1895 map shows all the land on both sides of Commonwealth Avenue divided into house lots from Hammond Street to Grant Avenue with the words “Newton Boulevard Syndicate” print- ed across the property.*® The map shows no development plans for the land bounded by South Street (College Road), Commonwealth Avenue, and Hammond Street; it shows five existing houses on all of that property. Not the name but the location of Beacon Street near Boston College has been changed. When in 1862 Amos Lawrence bought the Chestnut Hill property that is now Boston College’s middle and lower campus, his farm fronted to the south on Beacon Street and just at the east end of his land, where Chestnut Hill Drive is now. Beacon Street veered left on a direct line to Cleveland Circle over the bed of the reservoir. To make a reservoir of sufficient capacity land on both sides of Beacon Street’s original location was taken in 1868 and Beacon Street from the Lawrence property to Cleveland Circle became an elaborate curve. One more example of street-name indefiniteness: Lake Street was given its name in 1860 by the town of Brighton; yet an 1886 city document speaks of it as “Lake Street or Foster Street.”** [ 4 ] But perhaps the most important street names for Boston College are Howland, Fessenden, Southgate, and Hill Streets, and their importance is that they were not built! A 1907 map shows a developer’s plans for dividing about sixty percent of the former Law- rence farm into forty-five house lots, embracing our present middle campus from Commonwealth Avenue south to about Cushing and Fulton Halls The lots were arranged on four streets with the names listed above. Howland and Fessenden eventually became street names elsewhere in Newton. Hill is apparently a topographical ref- erence and Southgate, heading south towards Beacon Street, probably refers to Hancock House, Campion Hall’s small neighbor, which appears on mid- nineteenth century maps as a gate house. So in 1907 planners were dividing up the heart of the present campus and running residential streets through it. 1907 was a fateful year for Boston Col- lege. In January of that year Father Thomas I. Gasson became the thir- teenth president of the College and in December of the same year Gasson purchased the Chestnut Hill property and buried Howland, Fessenden, Hill, and Southgate Streets. A man of less vision and courage might have waited a year or two into his presidency to undertake the relocation of the College from the South End to Chestnut Hill. It looks as though a year or two later the present location would not have been available. Boston College is grateful that Thomas I. Gasson and not some Newton Boule- vard Syndicate became the developer of Chestnut Hill’s choicest site. [ 5 ] The accompanying map, showing what is now most of the middle cam- pus, is taken from Atlas of the City of Newton, G. W. Bromley Co., Phila- delphia, 1907. The owners of four par- cels of land that Father Gasson pur- chased are named on the map: Mass- achusetts Hospital Life Insurance Co; proprietors of Cemetery of Mt. Auburn and Henry Shaw; Provident Institution for Savings; and Ellen S. Eldredge. The Ramsbottom and Sharpe properties are now Philomatheia Hall and Alumni Hall. South Street is now College Road, so named in 1918. Commonwealth Avenue shows near the top of the map, while Beacon Street doesn’t quite show at the bottom. The former small Chestnut Hill Reservoir, now the lower campus, shows at the right of the map. [ 6 ] NOTES information concerning Ward Street and the streets cited in footnotes 2 through 4, 6 through 8, and footnote 11 is from the Street Card Files in the Engineering Department, Newton City Hall. 5 Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 181. ^ Henry K. Rowe, Tercentenary His- tory of Newton (City of Newton, 1930), pp. 277-8. ^^Atlas of the City of Newton, G.W. Bromley and Co., Philadelphia, 1895, in Newton Free Library. Atlas of the City of Newton, G.W. Bromley and Co., Philadelphia, 1907, in Newton Free Library. [ 8 ] h- O T3 ho tr* D> fD 3 O n> (t) o o c rt O 0) O (JQ n>