The Scollay Square Subway Station

After the removal of the Scollay Building (which gave the Square its name) traffic built along with post-Civil War population. By the 1890s Boston was in such terrible gridlock (does that sound familiar?) that the city approved a daring new idea - an railroad running UNDER the city's streets.

Once the first section of Boston's (and America's) first electric subway was completed around the Common in 1897, work on the extension into Scollay Square and other points north began.

To mitigate the impact of building in a busy, working city, excavation and construction was executed several hundred feet at a time. When each section was done, it was covered up as excavation proceeded on the next several hundred feet. 

The completed Scollay Square station was a beautiful structure. Sheathed in granite with a copper roof, it was public works that was also public art .

The subway worked really well, but then some damn fool went and invented the automobile. Then a guy named Ford made them so cheap that in the 1920s it seemed like everyone had one. Now Boston, back in gridlock, was faced again with massive gridlock.

The solution was to widen several major thoroughfares, such as Cambridge Street, which ran through Scollay Square. Along with slicing the fronts of many buildings (notable the Crawford House) the not-yet-forty year-old elegant subway kiosk was removed and replaced with these decidedly inelegant holes in the ground.   

The Government Center project wiped away most of the Square. Replacing the subway entrance in the center of Cambridge Street was something looking like the bottom half of a pyramid. Perhaps designers were inspired by Cold War fears and built what clearly looks like a bunker. This picture, by the way, is from one of my favorite films by one of my favorite actors, Robert Mitchum, At the end of The Friends of Eddie Coyle we see Peter Boyle (who has betrayed Coyle to the cops) walking towards the Government Center (nee Scollay Square) station, which sits in front of the Sears Crescent Building.

In 2014, after years of planning, construction on a new station for Government Center began. 

 Unlike the 1927 and 1964 rebuilds, as part of this project, the T took great pains to use as much of the original tiled Scollay Square signs as possible.

  In November, 2014 I was invited to tour the site by Brian Howland, the project's Resident Engineer. I was flattered to learn from Brian that my books on the Square were used by the engineers and designers in their planning for the job. (Brian was kind to give me this piece of the original tilework. Thank you, Brian!

 The first Scollay Square / Government Center stop was for the original underground trolley line to Charlestown. Just before World War One a station BELOW was added for a new line from East Boston, under the harbor, As we see in the original tiles the stop was called SCOLLAY UNDER. 

  If you take the T I can't think of a better way to kill times in between trains than to walk around and see and even touch these wonderfully refurbished pieces of old Boston and Scollay Square.