Old Harvard station

[rhodiecub2]

Does anyone have or know where I find pictures of the old Harvard station interior? I'm very curious to see what it had looked like.

Thanks

[octr202]

Does anyone have or know where I find pictures of the old Harvard station interior? I'm very curious to see what it had looked like.

Thanks

There's some here -- click on the links by station.

http://world.nycsubway.org/us/boston/red.html

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?49700
http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18219

Outbound platform, doors opening on left. This is what you see on the left when you round the curve in the slow zone after departing Harvard for Central. So the orientation of the picture is that you're looking backwards, the present curve starts where the tunnel continues in the picture past the platform, and the old tunnel approach was straight and came from the yard (portal was below street level at the foot of what's now the street-facing side of the JFK School). The outbound platform, like today's, was bi-level, upstairs. You can still see the first half of it until you hit the curve into the new station, which destroyed the other half of the platform. Doors opened on the right inbound, the platforms were connected by stairs and a corridor, and instead of being one contiguous station with the bus/TT tunnel they were separate stations connected by a pedestrian corridor. Trains turned in the yard before heading back on the other level. The old station's headhouse was the newspaper stand building next to the current entrance.

The temporary inbound Harvard-Holyoke station that was used from 1981-83 was built by cutting away the wall seen in the photo. That's what you see on the right after the inbound curve now, and the entrance was the huge metal grate you see on the sidewalk outside the Au Bon Pan that has the deep shaft underneath (no stairs anymore since there's a nearby emergency exit).

As you can see the old station was pretty small with Central/Kendall-sized platforms, wholly inadequate for the huge ridership at that stop. I can only imagine how dangerously crowded that got in the morning. The new northwest (as opposed to the old straight-north pointing at Allston yard tunnel) alignment was needed to get to Porter, which required demolishing the old station...but the need for an extra-spacious new one was half the reason for doing it.

[TomNelligan]

I'm very curious to see what it had looked like.

Compared to the current one, tiny and really dark! The reconstruction brought major improvements. But I've always been glad that they saved the original headhouse (now Out of Town News), which was and is a Harvard Square landmark.

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

I'm very curious to see what it had looked like.

Compared to the current one, tiny and really dark! The reconstruction brought major improvements. But I've always been glad that they saved the original headhouse (now Out of Town News), which was and is a Harvard Square landmark.

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?61481

Here's the headhouse when it was still the headhouse. Out of Town news was still there, but in a drab stand next to its current digs.

[rhodiecub2]

Thanks, for posting those links! I never saw the old station and the old yard.

[Ron Newman]

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?61481

Here's the headhouse when it was still the headhouse. Out of Town news was still there, but in a drab stand next to its current digs.

And the crosswalk in the foreground of that old photo is the location of the new (post-1985) headhouse. When driving a car on Mass. Ave. into Harvard Square, you used to have the choice of turning right (as now), or going straight onto Brattle Street. If you drove straight, you went through this crosswalk.

[tristanh1]

What about photos of Harvard/Holoke?
Can anyone remember what it looked like?

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

What about photos of Harvard/Holoke?
Can anyone remember what it looked like?

Nothing I can find on Harvard-Holyoke. It was a tiny, tiny station...just a narrow platform cut in the wall opposite old Harvard with a stairwell to the street. It's still completely intact except for the stairs to the street, so look out to your right next time you leave inbound from Harvard. You can see the hastily-decorated brick platform wall and even some grimy traces of where the old station signage was. Isn't a whole lot to look at because it was such a spartan station, but you can get a really good look at it since it's in the middle of the slow zone.


Couple of picks here of the other temp station, Harvard-Brattle. . .

http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18192
http://world.nycsubway.org/perl/show?18171

This was an outdoor station, built in the yard right outside the portal to ease the crush at the too-small Harvard-Holyoke (which may have been inbound-only). In the second daytime photo you can see the portal starts right at the end of the platform. Portal and station were below street-level, so those buildings are at the intersection of Brattle, Bennett, and Eliot Streets (I think the one on the left is still around today). Today this station is either the basement or foundation of the JFK School.

The tunnel's still there...ends at a concrete wall where the portal used to be, and on the other end at the cinderblock wall you see on the left outbound going into the curve and right inbound just before the Harvard-Holyoke and old station remnants. And it's three-track up to the bi-level split. Might still be accessible through a locked utility room, but there are no utilities or emergency exits in there like there is in the abandoned Boylston tunnel on the Green Line so I doubt anyone at the T has ventured down there in years. Harvard explicitly wanted it preserved when it was sealed in 1984 in case a cross-Allston subway were ever built. This is one of the possibilities for the long-range urban ring light-rail conversion of the 66 bus, where trains would dip underground around Harvard Stadium on the Allston side, go under the Charles, and then go through the old Red Line tunnel to terminate stub-end at the present station fare lobby.

[Ron Newman]

The old Harvard headhouse used to have a sign saying "8 Minutes to Park Street"

[tristanh1]

I think I have a black and white photo of it though you can't see that much in an old Rollsign. Also the mit journal is scanned in alot and has a bad photo of the opening of harvard brattle

[MBTA F40PH-2C 1050]

when did the MBTA redo Harvard? how long did this take?

[F-line to Dudley via Park]

when did the MBTA redo Harvard? how long did this take?

Harvard-Brattle was in-use from March 1979 to September 1983, and Harvard-Holyoke was in-use from January 1981 to September 1983. Old Harvard closed January 1981 with the opening of Harvard-Holyoke, and new Harvard opened September 1983 when both temp stations were closed and the tracks were switched onto the new alignment that severed the yard approach. Trains then deadended all the way through incomplete Porter to a crossover outside incomplete Davis to change ends for the return trip.

Not precisely sure why Harvard-Brattle was around 2 years longer than Harvard-Holyoke and while the old station was still open, but likely had something to do with the old platform station being affected most by construction of the new curve (since half of it ultimately was destroyed by the curve). Either that closed first or it was substantially disrupted for a couple years longer than the old inbound platform was.

[Ron Newman]

New Harvard opened in three stages. Initially only the Church Street entrance was open. Some time in 1985 the main entrance opened, and then finally the busway reopened (including the new Brattle Street entrance).

[Ron Newman]

I believe Harvard-Brattle opened when the busway closed in 1979, and at least some buses were diverted to serve it.