Stairs, Gates, Footpaths, and Odd Public Ways

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Somerville and Medford Peeps: I have another "political action" project:
Opening East Albion St* to through biking on the north slope of Winter Hill . It would make a great way to climb/descend Winter Hill on the north side.

But an "abutter-improvised" fence--clearly designed & aligned to create an extra parking space-- currently closes Albion to foot & bike at the Medford-Somerville Line:

Viewed looking "uphill" from Somerville side

Viewed looking "downhill" from Medford side

*EDIT: change references to EAST Albion St per LRFox's correction

Fun fact, the Middlesex Canal clung to the same side of Winter Hill, Just below (north of) [East] Albon St.
31-1-3.gif
 
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Somerville and Medford Peeps: I have another "political action" project:
Opening Albion St to through biking on the north slope of Winter Hill . It would make a great way to climb/descend Winter Hill on the north side.

But an "abutter-improvised" fence--clearly designed & aligned to create an extra parking space-- currently closes Albion to foot & bike at the Medford-Somerville Line:

Viewed looking "uphill" from Somerville side

Viewed looking "downhill" from Medford side

Fun fact, the Middlesex Canal clung to the same side of Winter Hill, Just below (north of) Albon St.
31-1-3.gif

Small nitpick - that's EAST Albion which is very different than Albion St. (runs parallel to Highland between Central and Cedar. I used to live on Albion St. in Somerville and more than once people using GPS to get to my place ended up over there (Conwell Ave and Conwell St. are another set that mess people up).

I agree with you though. I'd love to know the history on that fence.
 
I agree with you though. I'd love to know the history on that fence.

Could easily date back 50+ years. Looking at things like the 1971 Historic Aerials for it (where at that time, it looks like there was a direct road on the Medford side down to the industrial sites along Mystic Ave, I wouldn't be surprised if nuisance cut-through trucks/other uses were an issue then. The industrial building on the Medford side of the fence appears to have gone up in 1988. I don't think there has ever actually been asphalt laid connecting the Somerville + Medford sides, and the 1995 aerials had the whole "connection" area between the two streets with construction trucks lined up parked at a 90 degree angle to the road.

-------------

Also, East Albion is listed as a private way in both Somerville + Medford's street listings.



I suspect none of the abutters/property owners are going to want that fence removed for any access and with it being built literally on the town line, which town even has jurisdiction is probably a fun question as well.

I'm certainly not particularly knowledgeable on the details of MA's rules around public access through private ways or how things with with neighboring municipalities, but I'm guessing that if there's never been public access through the two halves, there may not be a legal right to it even if the public is allowed to access the individual halves? Is East Albion legally a continuous way that the public has access through, or is it two separate roads that run near each other?

I can clearly see the value to cyclists, but I think you're going to wind up with a big legal project on your hands if the abutters aren't friendly.
 
Here's an interesting angle: what if the guy at 61 Albion (Somerville) has actually built his fence in Medford? (it looks to me like it "bulbs out" into Medford so as to create a better parking space in front of his house in Somerville.

Mass GIS seems to show a through street. Im not sure what that barely-visible artifact is on the city line (fence? or just the boundary?)
East_Albion_Somerville_Medford.PNG
 
I'm creating this thread for oddball projects that combined elements of:
1) The old hillside staircases of Orient Heights, above Medford Square, Winter Hill-to-Mystic, and Boston
2) Places where the public way is just a gate or fence gap
3) Streets that are platted but never improved
4) Sidewalks that aren't alongside anything, but aren't real paths either.

Typcially, there's also an element of:
1) We can't fix that (staircase) or we'd have to make it ADA accessible
2) It used to be or was supposed to be a full through way but was never "done"
 
For want of a better place for it, this is more of a lost roads story, but I think it fits, because it is most definitely an odd piece of public way. Driving to and from Logan's economy garage, I was always facinated by Neptune Road. I thought it looked like a forlorn, forgotten segment of Olmsted's work in the same vein as Park Drive in the fens; a lush, central median boulevard - just one that goes nowhere. In fact, it is the last remaining fragment of Olmsted's vision for this area. It the last remaining remnant of a grand waterfront plan, swallowed by the frenetic pace of demand for access to the air.

Neptune Road never reached it's full potential; Olmsted intended it as a central boulevard of a grand east boston grid, built to a plan proposed as early as the 1860s, leading into a waterfront park, later known as the World Wars memorial park - Olmsted's biggest neighborhood park.
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However, these plans were never executed in full, as WW2 and air travel happened. Leading up to war, the southern grid was only built up from Maverick as far as Porter Street, as well as Neptune itself and the few blocks that didn't require new landfill. Indeed, the void left behind would come to define the future boundary between Logan and East Boston.
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By 1950, just 12 years and over 2 square miles of landfill later, aerial imagry shows a sight already recognizable as Logan International airport, with all but one of its current runways havimg been built. This was the end of the street grid planned for East Boston; the initial construction of Logan required next to no land takings. The Neptune grid just never filled in; at the outbreak of war, few lots were occupied.
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Even so, until the 1960s, it was still possible to build a grid north from Neptune; indeed, the siting of 1952 built Wood Island seems intended to provide a center piece to this area. Yet, as a result, Neptune was severed at the track crossing from Day Square, sealing it's fate. Ultimately, this area wouldn't be filled in until the 1970s, by which time the area had become fully swallowed by Logan. The few residential buildings ever built, and Olmsted's park, were soon demolished to make way for aviation support facilities and a runway extension.
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In the 21st century, all that remains of Olmsted's vision is the oddly disconnected grid of Frankfort and Swift terrace, and the stub of Neptune Road, which remains, to this day, a fully accessible public road, a beautiful boulevard to nowhere.
 
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Kenney St. in JP terminates at the VA parking lot, but there's still a valid easement that requires pedestrian access to South Huntington, so there's a gate there, and although you have to cut through the lot, you can still walk through with no issues: https://goo.gl/maps/QDQMYupCwe3UM3zj9
 
One I really hope will be made public someday: Walden St. Cattle Pass, North Cambridge. Contingent on an Alewife-Porter connecting path being graded alongside the Fitchburg Line ROW. This thing was built into the 1857 Fitchburg RR grade separation of Walden St. as a means of herding cattle offloaded from cars at West Cambridge Yard alongside the tracks to the slaughterhouse district at Porter (which was renamed from Cambridge Union Square in 1899 after the namesake hotel in the Square that first popularized the porterhouse steak...so 'obliquely' a name lineage). The cleanroomed 2008 road bridge is now the third-generation road overpass to host the original brick Cattle Pass tunnel underneath, which was rehabbed in '08. I lived a couple blocks up the street at the time and watched them work on the restoration daily, with excellent views from the temp side footbridge while the road bridge on top was completely demolished. Painstaking work, and from talking to the construction crews they said the Historical Society was withering in its accuracy requirements. Resulting rehabbed structure is wide enough to drive two beef cattle side-by-side through and would make an excellent ped connector if the ROW finally got a Porter-spanning side path grafted on. It really is a spectacular piece of work, even though you can barely see it from the road on the new bridge (though there is a very detailed historical placard with pics and the full story of the Cattle Pass on the sidewalk fence).

At time of restoration there was no specific plan in place for Danehy Park-Porter side path, just a wishlist item once the City figured out its grand scheme for tying together the Fresh Pond/Watertown Greenway system with Alewife/Minuteman and Danehy Park + linkage of the new Concord Ave. redev and legacy Rindge Ave. residential that all hit the tracks in a 1000 ft. span. Seems to have fallen onto the backburner as they've deadlocked themselves in complete indecision about which side of the parkway they plan to put the footbridge. Annoying because the ROW is 5+ tracks wide west of Sherman St. and the inbound-side shoulder has already been used 24/7 as a neighborhood shortcut to Danehy for a quarter-century (why, yes, I've been guilty of said trespassing numerous times myself!). South of Sherman crossing they might have to realign the tracks 2 ft. at a pinch right at the crossing-proper, but getting the rest of the way to Porter is easy as hell. Walden Sq. public housing already has the extremely nice Yerxa Rd. underpass just 900 ft. in from Sherman. The Cattle Pass is 1200 ft. from the Yerxa underpass, with side grading leftover from the '08 bridge replacement's temp footbridge for possibly trail-exiting up to Walden. And then the Porter Station CR stairs @ Mass Ave. are just 1400 ft. down from the Cattle Pass, needing only some wider switchback ramp installations on the far westbound side to be able to dump path traffic up to Square level. Really easy chunking to attempt 1 street at a time for $cheap$, since Danehy + Sherman + Walden Sq. + Walden St. + Porter all have probable egresses.

Honestly, I wonder why they've let themselves stall in target fixation over the Alewife-linkage footbridges and not done something down here by now. At barest minimum throwing up the chain-link fence and quickie paving between Sherman St. and the overgrown New St. crossing on the derelict Watertown Branch, as that's the full-on existing illegally heavily-utilized neighborhood shortcut that has ASAP safety coattails for giving "official" treatment. I don't much care if it takes another 10 years to figure out which side of the parkway their footbridge ultimately goes on...they need to pounce on at least that much. Finishing to Porter via the Cattle Path also isn't a big production. It just may involve Keolis shifting tracks at the Sherman grade crossing 2 ft. at incidental cost ding for greater traffic separation at the point of maximal squeeze. Otherwise the ROW linking to Walden Sq./Walden St./Porter still has the side room to...quite literally...stage a cattle drive. And believe me, the utilization might almost be at that level if you gave such an incredibly dense and parks-n'-rec heavy neighborhood a shortcut to Porter. My own daily commuting walk to the Red Line probably would've been a third faster if I'd been able to catch a path to the station up the street at Sherman instead of cutting over to Upland Rd. and dealing with the hills (and extremely slick brick sidewalk in winter) as most direct shot.



Fun fact...the Porter slaughterhouses all closed by the mid-1870's due to "urban renewal", but the cattle were still unloaded from West Cambridge and driven through the Cattle Pass until the 1920's. Only then they went up a ramp to Mass Ave. and were mushed down the street all the way to Harvard Sq. That had to have been quite the sight for anyone on a streetcar or driving a Model T and having to cut it to the left lane to pass a herd. Not to mention having to be Cambridge DPW cleaning up after all that ( :poop: ). Guessing the beef caravans down Mass Ave. were more nocturnally scheduled than the earlier Porter-proper meat moves.
 
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Interesting, I had no idea.
It's sort of traceable on a map. Follow the Fitchburg Line past the Park St. grade crossing, then notice how the second block of Harrison St. and its row houses start bending inward. That curve traces directly to the Beacon/Museum intersection.

The line was so short-lived because it was mainly for coal shipments to the University in the days before any of the streets were paved and that was simply too difficult a bulk delivery to make on horsecart on all-dirt roads. The branch never did much passenger traffic except for a few lightly-patronized North Station (separate Fitchburg RR station across street from Boston & Maine and Boston & Lowell) to Harvard short-turns. Most people just walked to the mainline stop at Park St., which was called Somerville Station (lasting to 1938). After Kirkland, Cambridge, and Mass Ave. got cobblestone paved and were laid out with horsecar railways the Square could get its coal cheaper on horsecar freight straight from one of the Fitchburg Main freight yards, so the line was quickly abandoned. Horsecar lines made it doubly passenger-useless because getting to the mainline stop from Harvard was faster than ever.


1852 map. . .
Harvard_Branch_Railroad.jpg


"Hampshire" = Beacon and "North Ave." = Mass Ave. As you can see most of the street grid around Museum came post-abandonment. The curve on Harrison St. conforming to the ROW was most likely a residual freight siding. Topo maps show Harrison as a tiny dead-end off Ivaloo St. until 1903 when it first shows complete to the corner of Kent. I'm guessing there was some long-gone factory on that Ivaloo-Kent block that got demolished 118 years ago to make room for an additional block of housing, and that's why the shape of the road snapshots the old rail junction alignment.
 
Partly inspired by this thread, today I led a one-person tour of a few of the Olmsted-designed Brookline hill paths (scroll the link to the bottom): Winthrop, Addington, Colborne, and the grand finale of Summit Path - that last one after a stopover in Washington Square for some Cafe Fixe, of course. My guest was six years old, so the destinations (Schick Park and Corey Hill Playground) made the journeys worthwhile for him, but the allure of the "secret passageway" didn't hurt either. We left Gardner, Claflin, Rawson and University Paths for a later visit to complete our Aspinwall Hill set.
 
Great thread. Totally random, in no particular order, my submissions (trying to avoid the obvious over-touristy stuff):

--I cherish the stairwell down from Summer St. to A Street in Fort Point Channel. To me nothing else so exudes "Dirty Old Boston."

--And this stairwell (two segments bisected by Gladstone) takes you to the base of the Don Orione Madonna Shrine at Orient Heights with its well-documented sweeping views of Logan

--The "Forty Flights" stairwell (never knew someone had bothered to name it) takes you to the top of Bunker Hill Ave. in Charlestown. Kind of a hidden gem.

--I like to think the Paul Revere footbridge is kept relatively tourist-free, for being by the Museum of Science, due to its gritty industrial vibe. I think it's totally awesome that it takes you over the abandoned Boston & Maine signal building with its glorious "Boston & Maine" inscription. So evocative.

--EDIT: forgot the recently-completed path by the Museum of Industry in downtown Waltham on the north bank of the Charles just downstream of Moody St. Who new walking through the remnants of the crucible of the American Industrial Revolution could be so pleasant?

--Finally, I think the MWRA should be given funds to place interpretative signage at strategic points along the Cochituate-Sudbury Aqueduct--especially at Newton Center Playground, with the old pumphouse and the brook system. I know, there's already the Waterworks Museum--but the Aqueduct is such a massive conspicuous legacy of the vestigial system--the system that made metro Boston modern, truly, along with the MBTA--that I think it deserves more.
 
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The stairs at the end of Bosworth? Boswell? Where you could go from Cafe Marlieve to the Littlest Bar(that place was AMAZING on Paddys Day)
 
The stairs at the end of Bosworth? Boswell? Where you could go from Cafe Marlieve to the Littlest Bar(that place was AMAZING on Paddys Day)
The Province House Stairs, led from the rear of the Province House up to the kitchen garden.
 
The stairs at the end of Bosworth? Boswell? Where you could go from Cafe Marlieve to the Littlest Bar(that place was AMAZING on Paddys Day)

They're charming and intimate and an iconic piece of DTX--but too many Freedom Trail tourist hordes/regular pedestrians in normal times, so disqualified (for me at least) in terms of my caveat about things that are non-touristy... I figured this thread was initially set-up to be oriented more toward things that only adventurous 'n' exploring metro Bostonians know about, "hidden gems"
 
It's sort of traceable on a map. Follow the Fitchburg Line past the Park St. grade crossing, then notice how the second block of Harrison St. and its row houses start bending inward. That curve traces directly to the Beacon/Museum intersection.

The line was so short-lived because it was mainly for coal shipments to the University in the days before any of the streets were paved and that was simply too difficult a bulk delivery to make on horsecart on all-dirt roads. The branch never did much passenger traffic except for a few lightly-patronized North Station (separate Fitchburg RR station across street from Boston & Maine and Boston & Lowell) to Harvard short-turns. Most people just walked to the mainline stop at Park St., which was called Somerville Station (lasting to 1938). After Kirkland, Cambridge, and Mass Ave. got cobblestone paved and were laid out with horsecar railways the Square could get its coal cheaper on horsecar freight straight from one of the Fitchburg Main freight yards, so the line was quickly abandoned. Horsecar lines made it doubly passenger-useless because getting to the mainline stop from Harvard was faster than ever.


1852 map. . .
Harvard_Branch_Railroad.jpg


"Hampshire" = Beacon and "North Ave." = Mass Ave. As you can see most of the street grid around Museum came post-abandonment. The curve on Harrison St. conforming to the ROW was most likely a residual freight siding. Topo maps show Harrison as a tiny dead-end off Ivaloo St. until 1903 when it first shows complete to the corner of Kent. I'm guessing there was some long-gone factory on that Ivaloo-Kent block that got demolished 118 years ago to make room for an additional block of housing, and that's why the shape of the road snapshots the old rail junction alignment.

Thanks for this - I spent longer than I should matching up streets. I walked much of this last night observing through a different lens after perusing the map. I would never have guessed that the street grid was that "new."


A friend of mine put together a map of pedestrian-only connections for Somerville, here.

This is awesome. Many I knew about, many I didn't. Some of the notes are outdated (i.e. Sacramento St. Underpass is open again, and Somerville Junction Park path is closed during GLX construction for now), but it's a great resource.
 

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