Longfellow Bridge

[OHanrahan]

Was there ever a tunnel under the Charles in the vicinity of the Longfellow bridge?

[eddiebear]

No. Where did you get that idea?

[Robert Paniagua]

The only tunnel in that area of the Longfellow Bridge would be the tail tracks after Bowdoin Station on the Blue Line, although there are remote plans to extend the Blue Line to Charles/MGH itself. But there would be NO underwater tunnel tom Cambridge for the Blue Line. All Blue line service would end at Downtown Boston or at least the adjacent West End.

[OHanrahan]

In a book i was flipping through about the West End, there is a picture of a tunnel entrance on Cambridge St. The caption reads "...streetcars on their way to Cambridge." Did these streetcars resurface at the bottom of Camb. sT. and cross the Longfellow?

[ferroequinarchaeologist]

It's s little off the track (pun intended) but there was - and I think still is - a tunnel under the Charles near Longfellow Bridge. It carried steam to MIT buildings.

[FatNoah]

I belive the tracks ran on the bridge itself.

[RailBus63]

In a book i was flipping through about the West End, there is a picture of a tunnel entrance on Cambridge St. The caption reads "...streetcars on their way to Cambridge." Did these streetcars resurface at the bottom of Camb. sT. and cross the Longfellow?

The tunnel portal on Cambridge Street was the west end of the East Boston Tunnel (today's Blue Line), which was originally built as a streetcar operation like the Tremont Street subway. Streetcars did indeed operate through that portal and over the Longfellow Bridge to Cambridge and beyond (Orient Heights to Harvard Square via streetcar - how cool was that?).

Even after the line was converted to rapid transit in 1924, the portal and tracks remained in use to ferry the 0500-series Pullman cars to a connection on the Longfellow Bridge with the Cambridge-Dorchester Subway (today's Red Line) - the East Boston line had no shop facilities and the cars were repaired at the Eliot St. shops near Harvard. The portal was closed up in the early 1950's when the Revere extension and the Orient Heights shops were opened.

Jim D.

[SPUI]

It's s little off the track (pun intended) but there was - and I think still is - a tunnel under the Charles near Longfellow Bridge. It carried steam to MIT buildings.

I think MIT has always gotten steam from its cogeneration plant on Vassar Street. The only walkable steam tunnel at MIT goes from cogen south to just west of the great dome; no others are needed because most of the buildings are connected.
There is some substructure in the Longfellow - big cavernous spaces with sketchy crumbling elevated walkways. I think there are pipes running through the space under the red line.
The Eliot Footbridge at Harvard carries steam (and a steam tunnel) from Harvard's main campus to the Business School across the river.