LIRR to Boston   What? Take the Long Island Railroad to Boston? That must be a joke, right?. No. That was the reason the LIRR was built, to connect Brooklyn and Boston. We need to return to the second quarter of the 1800’s, the era of emerging canals and rails, the time the State of Pennsylvania was connecting Philadelphia and Pittsburgh by first one, then the other technology.

Again, the choices had been few, either water (ocean or river) or dirt roads. But wait—let’s modify that just slightly before proceeding. Long before twentieth-century asphalting of what had been dirt roads, another choice emerged for a while in the mid-nineteenth century: wooden roads. I phrased it that way more for the shock value. Actually, the two kinds were called corduroy roads or plank roads, and they thrived in this period in two regions, the Northeast, and Midwest.

The corduroy road was a primitive, and dangerous thing. Logs, perhaps whole, perhaps halved, were placed next to each other across the roadway over low or swampy areas. They were very rough. They were also dangerous, particularly to horses, because only the logs’ weight held them in place, meaning they could shift with use or after storms.

More “modern” was the plank road, which consisted of sleepers laid along the roadway with planks of pine or oak (!!) laid across them, either 8 or 16 feet wide. The planks were smooth boards, 3-4 inches thick. There were side ditches for water drainage. I remember reading years ago about the Paterson Plank Road, connecting Paterson NJ, a major industrial center of the time, with the Hudson. It has long since been replaced by Route 3. On an older online map of Queens I saw recently, two major local streets, Myrtle Avenue and Cypress Hills Street, are referred to as Myrtle Avenue Plank Road and Cypress Hills Plank Road. Often, perhaps usually, since they were state-of-the-art, plank roads were toll roads. They were so popular at one point that people kept investing in companies building them. Eventually, the bubble burst, a lot like the contemporary dot-com bubble. Things were more similar then than one might believe. It is not really so ususual to have a wooden road. Think of the wooden sidewalks you see in old Western movies, or in older towns you may have visited (Skagway, for one). Also, consider the boardwalk. Boardwalks are typical of beach areas around the world, but are concentrated in the Northeast US and in California. Although they, like wooden sidewalks, are pedestrian-oriented, service and police vehicles also do use them. Wooden highways are less odd than at first blush.

But again, long-distance travel choices in this period are still primarily by water and dirt roads, so let me establish the setting. I live in lower Manhattan, but if I were where I am now, I’d be wet. The original geography, through the New Amsterdam period, had the Hudson lapping at the bluff behind Trinity Church, at what is now Church Street. The Church faces Broadway, but if I were standing behind it, I’d be in the river. Several blocks were filled in over time up to West Street, which would be the water’s edge in the period we’re discussing. Battery Park City, where I live now, was extended two blocks further only in the 1980’s. So let’s say I was living just a bit further inland at the time, on West Street.

According to an 1847 map I found online, I could walk over to the East River side and get the boat to New Haven and Hartford. I could also get the packet boats to New Orleans, Liverpool, and London. Packet boats were those that had government charters to carry the mail and packages. The name derives from the French word for package, paquet (paKE, rhymes with caFE). This being before the bridge-and-tunnel era, there are also numerous ferries, including the Fulton Ferry, connecting Fulton Street New York with Fulton Street Brooklyn, the only street to retain its name between New York (Manhattan) and Brooklyn. Also keep in mind that, in this period, “New York” means hardly more than the southernmost tip of Manhattan as I’m describing it now, and “Brooklyn” means only the northwesternmost part of contemporary Brooklyn, opposite New York across the East River; it is the area now referred to as Downtown Brooklyn. We have two tiny urban entities under discussion.

Again in New York (Manhattan) on the Hudson side, we have river boats to Sing Sing (called Ossining today to disassociate itself with the prison), Peekskill, Newburg, Kingston, and Poughkeepsie. This being an 1847 map, there are also modern steamboats to Albany and Troy. On West Street (that’s the river’s edge) between Morris Street and Battery Place, very close to where I live today, are the Philadelphia steamboats, and also—ah, here they are—the piers for the Fall River Line to Boston and the Boston Lines via Providence and Worcester. I can now be on my way to Boston if I choose to go by water.

But let’s see what my road choices would be. Actually, because of the geography involved, few roads start in New York (Manhattan). This is typical of areas surrounded by water. For instance, San Francisco is at the northern end of a peninsula. Roads, and local rail, run south down the peninsula, but roads north and east have always been at the other side of a ferry ride, or, in contemporary times, at the other side of a bridge. Long-distance rail reaches the area instead in Oakland, on the east side of the Bay, including the California Zephyr from Chicago and the Coast Starlight up and down the west coast, from where passengers used to be ferried across the Bay and are now treated to a bus ride over the bridge to San Francisco.

But Manhattan, being an island, was always more isolated. And since it’s a narrow island running north-south, there have never been any long-distance roads starting in Manhattan going west or east. To go west, you’d take a ferry across the Hudson (tunnel or bridge today), then use long-distance roads in New Jersey, the Paterson Plank Road being a historic example and the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey turnpike being examples of contemporary ones. It can also be noted in advance that railroads also traditionally ended on the New Jersey side and ferried passengers over, an example being the former Central Railroad of New Jersey terminal I see out my window. Until the Pennsylvania Railroad tunneled under the Hudson, there was no direct rail access west, just like San Francisco has no direct rail access east.

Back to traditional roads and back to Manhattan. Going east meant a ferry to Brooklyn (at later dates also to Queens), for connections on to Long Island. Leaving Brooklyn were roads like Flushing Avenue, Jamaica Avenue, and Flatbush Avenue, today just city streets but back in time country roads running out to those communities. It might now become clearer just what a huge advance the Brooklyn Bridge was in 1883 (as well as later crossings). It not only connected the two Twin Cities, virtually City Hall to City Hall, it gave New York (Manhattan) its first direct long-distance access eastward. To jump ahead to rail, the Long Island Railroad (and others on LI that the LIRR eventually acquired) all had terminals at or near the East River, in Brooklyn, one in Bushwick with horsecar access to the river, to Hunter’s Point in Queens, and perhaps some others. Again, only when the Pennsylvania Railroad tunneled under the Hudson, through Manhattan, and then under the East River to Queens connecting to New England did Manhattan have any direct east-west rail access.

The only long-distance road access New York (Manhattan) had was to the north, along the long axis of the island, then over the narrow Harlem River to the Bronx. This was also the route of growth, up to the point where what is now the separate Bronx was legally part of two-borough New York, before the vast consilidation with Brooklyn and other areas in 1898.

I’ve already discussed that Broadway, starting in the southernmost tip of Manhattan, is the road north. Actually, it was the traditional Albany Post Road. Broadway zigzags up Manhattan crossing the avenues (laid out later) at angles, creating Times and Herald Squares, and others. In Reflections 2005 Series 18, I mentioned how Frederick Philipse had the water-or-dirt road choices; he could have gone to Philipsburg Manor by boat up the Hudson or by coach up Broadway.

Looking at the wedge made by the Hudson River and the New England coast, it should not surprise that the other major long-distance road north actually runs northeast. It’s the Boston Post Road. It is currently a shopping street in the Bronx, not far from the first apartment Beverly and I had, and continues on into New England, occasionally with original milestones, now sheltered at the side of the road. Much of it is US Route 1, a significantly low number. The name is often shortened to either Boston Road or Post Road. I had always wondered where it begins in Manhattan, and one day I had an epiphany. Where Broadway comes north to City Hall in Lower Manhattan, Park Row suddenly takes off at an angle to the right, wedging City Hall Park between itself and Broadway, and leading on to the Bowery. This split then personifies the the long-distance land choices New Yorkers had in early days: come up Broadway, reach City Hall, and go left of it to Albany or right of it to Boston.

So, in the period we’re considering, the second quarter of the 19C, let’s say it’s 1825, and I either take a boat at West Street to Boston, or take a stagecoach a few blocks away at Broadway up the Boston Post Road.

We now re-enter the period of canals and emerging railroads, including Pennsylvania trying to connect its two major cities. But in New England, canals are not the factor they are otherwise. A canal across Cape Cod had been discussed since the 1600’s, but none was built, including in the big canal-building period, until 1909-1916. The value of the Cape Cod Canal is that it allows coastal shipping to hug the shore and not have to go around the cape. Saving the extra distance is less important than avoiding the weather and current conditions often encountered by going the long way around. The canal is 17.4 miles long, 7 of which are cut through land, which implies that some ocean dredging was also necessary. At 540 feet, the Cape Cod Canal is the widest canal in the world. Yet although it would have helped shipping in the 20C, in the time period we’re discussing, ships would have had to have taken the long way around the Cape.

So, in our time period, rail is the mode of the future. The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal was already partially rail, to be essentially replaced two decades later by the Pennsylvania Railroad. If Philadelphia was eager to get connected west to Pittsburgh, New York was eager to get connected east to Boston.

Boston was of course a major city, but why the rush to Boston as opposed to elsewhere? To get to Europe. To understand this best, we have to talk again about just where Europe is located. Europe is not, as Mercator projection maps mislead one to believe, parallel to North America across the Atlantic. Picture a couple at the beach lying on beach towels. Instead of lying parallel to each other, picture them at a 90° angle, head-to-head. If they wanted to hold hands, picture the direction they would have to reach. That’s how Europe and North America connect, not straight across, but at a steep angle. The distance between the two only takes about three days to cross, they’re that close. When we were on the Deutschland in 2000, that’s just what we did. We left Cuxhaven near Hamburg, stopped in Plymouth in England and Waterford in Ireland, then crossed to Newfoundland in three days, and we were in North America. All well in good, but not that many people want to go from Europe to Newfoundland. After two other Canadian stops, we stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia, then (passing Boston), stopped in New York. From Newfoundland to New York we were not really crossing the Atlantic. We were acting like a coastal steamer instead, going along the North American coast. The QM2 and other ships do this as well, since this is the standard Transatlantic Route. The QM2 leaves Southampton and is off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in a few days. It then proceeds along the coast, past Halifax and Boston, to New York.

Samuel Cunard set up his company in 1840 (our time period) in Halifax. He was the first to offer scheduled transatlantic service, and got government contracts to carry the mails. He certainly wasn’t going to carry the mails from Britain just to Newfoundland, so he chose Halifax as the closest bigger city as you come down the coast, and I’ve seen the plaque in Halifax commemorating that fact. Halifax remains today Canada’s major Atlantic port, and served later as Canada’s Ellis Island, but before long, Cunard felt his ships could make better connections by continuing down the coast just a bit further, and he changed his center of operations to Boston. There is displayed in a glass case on the QM2 (it used to be on the QE2) a rather large silver loving cup that was given by the citizens of Boston to Cunard for his having moved his center of North American operations there. (The loving cup had been misplaced for years, and when it was found again and put on display, the lid was missing, and remains so. The Cunard joke is, if you find the lid, let them know.) Only much later did Cunard move down the coast even further, to make New York its center of operations, and its ships still sail out of New York. But in our time period, aside from it being a major city, Boston was the gateway to Europe, and New Yorkers wanted to connect to it promptly by rail. Early on, sailing ships were unpredictable due to wind problems, and cutting the sailing time shorter by 2-3 days by going by rail to Boston in the first place was highly advantageous.

So, here we are. How do we build a rail line from to Boston? And more important: where? This is my interpretation of the facts.

The thing to get around, corresponding to Allegheny Mountain in Pennsylvania, was Long Island Sound. The choice was to go north of it, or south. Picturing again the two tiny twin cities involved, laying track north around the Sound meant starting from New York (Manhattan), and essentially following the route of the Boston Post Road through Connecticut. Laying track south around the Sound meant starting from Brooklyn instead and going across Long Island to the North Fork town of Greenport. There a ferry line would bring travelers to Stonington in eastern Connecticut, where rail would continue to Boston.

It brings not a little smile to think how this could also be considered an additional point of rivaly between New York (Manhattan) and Brooklyn. Which of these two twin cities would connect with Boston—and beyond? Just think of the prestige involved.

One fact I did find in researching this online is that it was felt that laying track through Connecticut was impossible (!!!). Because of so many rivers and streams, also a jagged coastline with many inlets, too many bridges would be needed. Also, acquiring a right-of-way through all those coastal towns would be difficult and expensive. On the other hand, you could avoid all the towns on the North and South Shores of Long Island by running track down the center of relatively unpopulated, and flat, Long Island, which was thought to be much easier.

We have the convenience of hindsight to marvel at the mindset of the times. Couldn’t the inconveniences of Connecticut be overcome? Wouldn’t a one-seat northern route be more desirable than a three-seat (rail-ferry-rail) southern route? The only explanation I can see is that people were much more used to traveling by boat (or ferry), and it seemed a perfectly logical and customary solution to include a water segment, so plans were made for a southern route to Boston down Long Island.

I discussed not only roads out of (tiny) New York (Manhattan), but also roads out of (tiny) Brooklyn, including Flushing Avenue going northeast, Jamaica Avenue going east, and Flatbush Avenue going southeast, connecting Brooklyn with those communities. In addition, just a very short distance south of Jamaica Avenue, and parallel to it, is Atlantic Avenue, running all the way to Jamaica as well.

Actually, Atlantic Avenue starts at the Brooklyn waterfront, crosses Flatbush Avenue, and runs through East New York to Jamaica, in Queens. East New York is a neighborhood of Brooklyn very near the Queens border. My sisters and I were born and grew up there. My father grew up on Atlantic Avenue, and his mother and other relatives of ours lived there for many years. At the time, Atlantic Avenue to me was just another street, with the railroad running under it. Until now, I never realized its historic context, as a potential road to Boston and London. (There is also a West New York, a city in New Jersey.) Considering the rivalry between the twin cities, it must have rankled Brooklyn when the community of East New York was established in eastern Kings County, Brooklyn’s turf (and now contiguous with a grown Brooklyn). What if there had been such a thing as a “Minneapolis Heights” neighborhood in Saint Paul? What about a “Tampa Shores” in Saint Petersburg? But I digress (as usual).

It is helpful to this discussion to consider the route in three sections, first, the very short section of Atlantic Avenue from the Brooklyn waterfront to Flatbush Avenue; second, the balance of Atlantic Avenue from there via East New York to Jamaica; third, the balance of the entire route from Jamaica to the ferry, and to Boston. Also, what must have originally been a surface route through Brooklyn, today is part elevated, part subway, but that remains immaterial.

In 1832 the Brooklyn & Jamaica Railroad Company, which had rights to the ten miles of what I’m defining as the first two sections along Atlantic Avenue, started construction only in the larger section from Flatbush Avenue east. Two years later, in 1834, the Long Island Railroad Corporation incorporated in Jamaica. Today the busiest commuter railroad (a change from its original plan) in the US, it is the oldest railroad still operating under its original name. Two years after that, in 1836, the LIRR leased the Brooklyn & Jamaica’s trackage in order to have an outlet from Jamaica to Brooklyn, and presumably later acquired it. Also in 1836, the LIRR started to lay track east of Jamaica. Onward to Boston! (Note that today, Jamaica remains the hub of LIRR service for all but one line.)

We are now talking about connecting Brooklyn to Boston, but there was still the problem of accommodating passengers from that other pesky twin city of Brooklyn’s.

The southernmost tip of Manhattan at Battery Park has almost always had ferry service, and it’s referred to as South Ferry, which is even the name of the subway station there. That older map I had found online shows that there were three ferries operating from there. To the southwest went the Staten Island Ferry across all of Upper New York Bay, and it’s the only one of the three still operating today. It’s a longer route, marked on that map as being 9814 yards long.

Next came two much shorter ones to Brooklyn. Going southeast near Governor’s Island was the Hamilton Avenue ferry on Buttermilk Channel, only 1760 yards. Running since the mid-20C along this same route is the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. There is irony that Hamilton Avenue is walkable from where the QM2 now docks with service to Britain.

The shortest route from South Ferry, only 1572 yards, was to the end of Atlantic Avenue. This was the connection chosen for the LIRR to collect its New York passengers arriving in Brooklyn for service beyond. At first, horsecars brought passengers arriving from South Ferry along this first stretch of Atlantic Avenue to the Flatbush Avenue Depot (as it was called). Later, next to the ferry terminal they built a small depot, with rail connections uphill to Flatbush Avenue and beyond. This first short section along Atlantic Avenue couldn’t have been more than a mile long, if that. I find it maybe the most interesting part of the story.

The beginning of Atlantic Avenue runs immediately south of the prestigious neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. You may recall my discussing that there are several other neighborhoods south of Brooklyn Heights, now all landmarked, and one of them is called Cobble Hill. I said above that this rail connection went uphill on Atlantic Avenue; well, specifically it ran up Cobble Hill. And there was a problem. The trains couldn’t make it up the hill on their own, as their wheels started to slip.

The temporary, and embarrassing, solution, was to hitch up teams of horses to the train to help this “iron horse” make its way up the hill. That must have been a sight to see.

The more permanent solution, reached in 1844, was to dig away this section of Atlantic Avenue, then relay the tracks. At first it was an open cut, but it was promptly roofed over for road traffic above. The result was the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, sometimes referred to as the Cobble Hill Tunnel. It was a two-track arched-roof brick construction.

Starting only about two blocks from the waterfront, it ran roughly a half-mile of that short distance to Flatbush Avenue--to be exact, 2750 feet/830 meters. Since it carried railroad trains under a city street, some have referred to it as the first subway in the world, but that’s rather iffy, since it wasn’t really meant to be such, and didn’t have any stations within it anyway.

Also in 1844, the entire route having been completed, the LIRR Boston service began, and through service from Brooklyn to Greenport took only an amazing 3 ½ hours, a huge savings in what would otherwise have been sailing time. So everything was perfect, right?

But just six years later, in 1850, the “impossible” rail route through Connecticut was indeed completed, and sure enough, a one-seat ride was indeed preferable to the public to three. The LIRR lost business, and in time, all pretentions of the LIRR to interstate service ended.

This turn of events had its first effect on the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel. In 1859, just nine years after its opening, the last train went through it, and in 1861, its ends were sealed shut. Ever since, and to this day, Brooklyn LIRR service has started at Flatbush Avenue instead of at the waterfront. Although the tunnel’s existence remained on city records, and inspectors did check it out once in a while, everyone else forgot about it. Its ongoing story runs something like a fairy tale.

Fast-forward nothing less than a full 120 years to 1981. A railfan named Bob Diamond was discussing the tunnel on a radio show, and in time, he searched for it and rediscovered it. He has since conducted periodic tours of the tunnel for those interested (entry is through a manhole). I’m glad he found it, and I don’t want to sound like sour grapes, but where would the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel be but—duh—under Atlantic Avenue, and under this short section of it, at that. (Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?) Nevertheless it was indeed an accomplishment, one that no one else was interested in achieving. And in 1989, the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel was entered into the National Register of Historic Places. Yet it remains sealed, and like Sleeping Beauty, hidden away.

But one more interesting point about the tunnel is its literary connection. I’ve mentioned that poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892) was associated with Brooklyn Heights. He was also very much acquainted with the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, and it was abandoned even in his day. In his “Walt Whitman’s New York” he writes:

The old tunnel, that used to lie there under ground, a passage of ... solemnity and darkness, now all closed ... and soon to be utterly forgotten, with all its reminiscences.... For it was here you started to go down the island, in summer. For years, it was confidently counted on that this spot, and the railroad of which it was the terminus, were going to prove the permanent seat of business and wealth that belong to such enterprises. But its glory, after enduring in great splendor for a season, has now vanished—at least its Long Island Railroad glory has. The tunnel: dark as the grave, cold, damp, and silent. How beautiful to look at earth and heaven again, as we emerge from the gloom!

Whitman saw absolutely correctly that the tunnel was “soon to be utterly forgotten”. He bewails the short permanence of the tunnel—“a season”--, but of course, the railroad does survive. He looks upon the tunnel as the now-lost entrance to Long Island, where the change from the tunnel’s darkness at the start of the trip to daylight again foresees a bright future ahead.

So the LIRR had to reinvent itself for service just within Long Island. Its business plan to service the underpopulated center of the island on its now-nonexistent way to Boston left it with a depleted customer base, so it expanded to service the North and South Shores. Jumping ahead, in 1876, several Long Island railroads united under the LIRR name, including the South Side Railroad, the Central, and several railroads to Flushing.

I want to mention three edicts that had a permanent effect on the entire region. The first edict was a law passed by the City of Brooklyn in 1860. Long tired of the soot and noise of the trains, Brooklyn stated that there could no longer be rail service west of East New York. All trains would start in East New York on their way to Jamaica and beyond. Between East New York and Flatbush Avenue, only horsecar service would be allowed, which is the equivalent of bus service today. This also put the last nail in the coffin of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel, under these circumstances more useless than ever. I suppose it must have been felt that East New York was far enough away from the center of things. In some ways, it reminds me of today’s airports usually being located way out of town.

The LIRR apparently responded with a “you don’t want us, so we don’t want you” attitude. From Jamaica it built a new Main Line, entirely in Queens, with a terminus on the East River at Hunter’s Point, including ferry service to midtown—not downtown--Manhattan. In 1877 Brooklyn relented and allowed steam service back to Flatbush Avenue, but it was too late. From that day to this, Brooklyn, where the whole story started, has remained the secondary terminus of the LIRR out of Jamaica. There is still constant service all day long, but most people travel to Manhattan (in the 20C through the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnel to Penn Station; there is also an attempt for the LIRR to service Grand Central). There is great irony that it all started with rail service leaving Brooklyn to Boston, and today, Boston is not at all involved, and Brooklyn is a secondary terminus.

When the subways were built between Brooklyn and Manhattan, there was always talk of having LIRR trains enter Manhattan from Brooklyn via subway, but that never materialized. Since Nine Eleven, a major issue has once again been to have rail service from Lower Manhattan to Kennedy Airport, via Jamaica. What this of course would mean is to extend LIRR service from Flatbush Avenue under the East River to the new subway transportation center being built. Its future remains iffy because of expense, but if it ever happened, only those familiar with the history of the Brooklyn connection would see the irony in it. There is also major development due at the LIRR rail yards south of Atlantic Avenue at Flatbush. “Atlantic Yards” would include a basketball arena and a great deal of housing.

To talk about the second edict, I need to digress from this rail discussion. People visiting New York have mentioned to me that, as they take the limo from JFK along the Long Island Expressway, they are amazed at how many cemeteries New York has. The cemeteries go on and on. That’s not exactly true, but here’s why it looks like they do.

At one point, Brooklyn decided it didn’t want any more cemeteries within its limits in Kings County. Therefore, land speculators bought up vast tracts of land in Queens County right along the Brooklyn border. Presumably the small towns in Queens at the time were politically weaker, and couldn’t object. These tracts were made into a large number of cemeteries, of all denominations, and they do line up in Queens along the Brooklyn border, sort of like a strip mall. People viewing all these cemeteries from the bus don’t realize that they don’t run on north-south, just line up east-west along the Brooklyn border on the other side. So that Brooklyn edict has noticably altered the landscape.

Back to rail. To complete this section, since we’ve talked about rail through Connecticut to Boston from New York, a word or two about that. There are three rail routes north out of Manhattan. One had been the Hudson Railroad, running from western downtown up the west side, originally going to Albany. That is now the Metro-North Hudson Line out of Grand Central, with just suburban service. What had been the New Haven Railroad to Connecticut out of Grand Central is now also just suburban, the New Haven Line of Metro-North. But the most interesting service northbound out of Manhattan, presently the Harlem Line of Metro-North out of Grand Central, was what was originally the New York & Harlem Railroad. It was one of the first railroads in the US, incorporated in 1831, and the first in New York. At its greatest extent, it actually started way downtown, next to City Hall, ran up the Bowery and Park Avenue, to Harlem, then up to White Plains, and in its heyday, also to Albany.

There is also a tunnel parallel in Manhattan. Murray Hill is a neighborhood in the East Thirties. Theodore Roosevelt grew up there. The hill was a problem for the NY&H, and in 1834, it did an open-rock cut for its trains, and in the early 1850’s that cut was roofed over to form the Murray Hill Tunnel, on Park Avenue between 33rd and 41st Streets.

We now come to the third edict, but this one was not from Brooklyn, it was from New York (Manhattan). In 1854 a New York ordinance prohibited steam trains south of 42nd Street, which was way out in the boondocks. Since the Brooklyn ordinance cutting service at East New York didn’t come out until six years later, in 1860, it could be presumed that it was imitating New York.

So the New York & Harlem truncated its service at 42nd Street, and had horsecar service from there down to City Hall. The difference from Brooklyn though, is that New York never relented. Rail service never went downtown again, and still doesn’t. (Isn’t the current desire to extend Brooklyn service to Lower Manhattan now more ironic than ever?) The original Grand Central Terminal at 42nd Street even had an entrance in the front for the horsecars to enter, to transfer passengers to trains. Later on, the current Grand Central was built in the same spot. The horsecars went through the Murray Hill Tunnel. In later years, streetcars on Park Avenue used the tunnel. Today, the tunnel is not only still there and visible, the two inner lanes of auto traffic use it regularly for the eight blocks of its run.

So Brooklyn relented and trains now come past East New York to Downtown Brooklyn. New York never did, and trains at Grand Central start in Midtown. When the Pennsylvania Railroad cut through west to east under the Hudson to Penn Station, then under the East River to Queens and beyond, it did so just a couple of blocks south of another main thoroughfare in Midtown (NOT downtown), 34th Street. It presumably chose Midtown, since Grand Central (originally of the New York Central Railroad) was there. It seems to me that an argument could be made that, because of the 42nd Street edict never being rescinded, Midtown grew as a separate business center from Downtown, drawing businesses from the original center of activity. Food for thought.

For centuries, long-distance road service in Manhattan went north only. Otherwise you had to cross rivers to go east or west. With access now via bridges and tunnels, this is still roughly the same with modern highways.

Long distance rail service had also only been north out of Grand Central. East and west rail service began only on the other side of the rivers. With the Pennsylvania Railroad in the early 20C threading Manhattan like a bead on a string though, New Jersey Transit trains (consolidated from private lines) now enter Manhattan from the west and LIRR trains do so from the east. Both terminals have surburban service, but all long-distance Amtrak service has been moved to Penn Station. Therefore, all long-distance rail enters and leave Manhattan east-west now, contrary to the traditional accessibility.

New York, along with a couple of other large cities, still has the best rail service in the country, but one thing bothers me. The New Jersey trains come from the west to Penn Station, then return. The LIRR trains come from the east, then return. Only Amtrak offers full east-west through service. I’m sure there are some technical problems to be solved, but why couldn’t there be local through service, say from Newark to Jamaica? From New Haven to Trenton? This nonsense would never happen in Berlin, or elsewhere in Europe. Not only was I only a long-distance train from Hamburg to Berlin, that went on, I think, to Munich, but all regional service, say from Rostock via Berlin to perhaps Dresden is also through service. Doesn’t that make sense? Also, all subway service everywhere, including New York, never dead-heads, but always goes from suburb, through downtown, to suburb. Why not regional rail as well?

Acela to Boston   Beverly and I have been to Boston many times, by car, by train, for a conference, usually for pleasure. The last time we went was in early December 1993 and late November 1994. At that point we had sold our house in Purchase and were living temporarily full-time in Florida, making New York visits occasionally. We had seen a brochure praising Boston in the winter, went the first time as an extension of a trip to New York, enjoyed ourselves so much, that we did it again the following year. Both times we took Amtrak’s Metroliner.

But my very first time to Boston was when I was in college. I had never taken a trip just by myself before, and I got it into my head to go visit my cousin in Harvard. The trip was totally spontaneous; I hadn’t checked my way around Boston in advance as I would usually do. I found that the train would have been beyond my budget—in retrospect I wish I’d tried it—so I took the bus.

This would have been sometime in the very late 1950’s, and I-95 hadn’t been fully completed through the Bronx. Therefore, when the bus left Manhattan, I most definitely remember it going up the Boston Post Road in the Bronx for a while before returning to more major highways. At the time, I did enjoy the appropriateness of being on Boston Road, but now, I find it of even greater interest. Buses are the modern, motorized equivalent of stagecoaches, and on my first trip to Boston, for a short distance, I went by “stagecoach” on the old colonial route to Boston. How’s that for doing it the traditional way the first time around?

The Northeast is among the most populated parts of the US. In addition, the cities are lined up along the coastline, and, as they grow, are filling much of the space between them, resulting in what is called the Northeast Corridor. There is an only slightly humorous name for the resulting megacity: Bosnywash, referring to Boston-NY-Washington and everything in between. Even though we have been allowing our once magnificent network of train routes to shrivel and die, and allowing Amtrak to maintain only a bare-bones residue, nevertheless, Amtrak has begun a high-speed service between Boston, New York, and Washington in addition to its express Metroliner service. This was the route that the X2000 was run on temporarily when Sweden was trying to sell that system to Amtrak.

It should be understood that the best high-speed service involves building new rights-of-way, such as in France and Germany. I’ve mentioned in the past how the TGV goes from Marseille and two other cities near Marseille to Paris in three hours, all on a dedicated route. It makes no intermediate stops. It’s the same distance as though a train went from New York to the Carolinas in three hours. What would Orlando be, five hours at that rate? That comes close to “flying on the ground”.

But in Sweden, the US, and elsewhere, to save money, new trains are designed to go at reasonably fast speeds on the traditional rail system, rather than at very high speeds on new rights-of-way. Amtrak’s Acela uses a tilt technology that allows the train to tilt into curves and possibly achieve speeds of up to 150 mph. Scheduled Acela time from New York to Boston is just over 3 ½ hours, which is not bad, especially since it makes three intermediate stops in Connecticut and Rhode Island before its three local Boston stops.

I had bought first-class tickets. Don’t be misled by that statement because of the first-class situation in airlines, where the fare could be astronomically above coach tickets, sometimes double or more. First-class on Acela is a reasonable premium on the regular ticket.

I took the subway to Penn Station early, since the first-class ticket allows entrance to Club Acela, where I enjoyed complementary juice, coffee, and a muffin. On boarding the train, the seats were very comfortable; most had airline-type fold-down tables, and many had fixed wooden tables, which I took. I plugged in my laptop and wrote the whole time to Boston. Included for first class was a meal: hot soup or salad, an overstuffed sandwich, and a chocolate bar, all served by the waitstaff. Also included were many beverages; I had a Bass Ale, and afterwards, a Bailey’s. The trip was very pleasant. I also checked out other coaches a bit. The articulated spaces between coaches are easy to navigate, and have automatic doors.

Leaving Penn Station we went under the East River and emerged in Queens. We swung left and went over the Hell Gate Bridge, the rail bridge close to the Triboro road bridge. Both bridges connect Queens to the Bronx over the swirling East River waters known as the Hell Gate. The Hell Gate bridge is high, and we had a perfect view of the New York skyline. We stopped in Stamford and New Haven in Connecticut, and Providence in Rhode Island. It’s amusing to think this route was once considered “impossible”. Locally in Boston are stops at Route 128 for suburban passengers, then Back Bay Station, and finally South Station, Boston’s main station, beautifully renovated a few years ago.

[As an aside, I’ll mention that the evening I came in, I had occasion to talk to two different people who asked, when I said I had just come in that afternoon from New York, whether I had driven or flown. Even in the Northeast, with our excellent rail service, no one though to ask about arriving by train. You may reasonably assume that I set them straight. Others had visited New York, but by car. Why would a visitor to Manhattan want his car with him?]

I took the “T”, Boston’s subway system, making connections to the Aquarium station, which let me off at Long Wharf, where I was staying. (Actually, the Aquarium is one wharf over, but let’s not be picky.) On our last trip, we had noted that the Marriott Long Wharf, pointed out architectually in Michelin, was where we wanted to stay next time, and this was it. It’s an interesting slope-sided building at the beginning of the wharf. All these wharves are now redeveloped with many modern structures, and also some historical ones, but the Long Wharf, built in 1720, is the oldest existing wharf, and it is stated that it was the “thoroughfare connecting Boston with the world”. Only then did the light bulb turn on. I had booked the Marriott Long Wharf because it had looked good last time when we just visited it, and it has a nice location. Only now did it strike me that, in the 1830’s that we are considering, when I could have taken a boat to Boston from West Street right near where I live, it is very likely that Long Wharf (or the ones next to it) would be where I would have arrived. In other words, from home that morning by rail to the Marriott by that afternoon corresponded to what would have been a boat trip of considerably longer length. And I just happened to realize it by chance at the last minute. Also, the Marriott had a series of Cunard travel posters on display from a later era probably well into the 20C. Still, they read: Cunard—Boston to Europe.

These essays have never been meant to be travel guides. Those who have never been to Boston will have more historical sights to see then they can shake a stick at, and some of the best art museums as well. None will be mentioned here. What I like to discuss are some of the quirkier aspects of travel, the ones that have always especially appealed to me and to Beverly.

Take the question of landfill (it’s more interesting than you may think). I know of few Europan cities, if any, who have extensively increased their size by removing watered areas by filling them in with earth. Yet in the US, at least four cities come to mind who have done so. Also, language helps here, since place names are a guide.

In San Francisco, a frequently visited area is the Italian-American neighborhood of North Beach. North Beach is nowhere near the water. San Francisco Bay is a number of blocks away. That should be a clue. Sure enough, much of the area north of downtown San Francisco has been filled in, including the beautiful Embarcadero along the waterfront, now attractively restored.

Moving east, Washington DC has been extended. There had been a large bulge in the Potomac, much of which is now the Mall. The Capitol Building on the east end is on original ground, as is the White house to the north, but most of the Mall is built on landfill, including the areas of the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

I’ve already mentioned that the originally jagged-looking southern tip of Manhattan has been extended by periodic “U-shaped” landfills down the Hudson side and up the East River side. Most of Battery Park is on landfill. Castle Clinton, the former fort protecting the harbor, later transformed first into a theater where Jenny Lind sang, then an immigration station older than Ellis Island, an aquarium, and now a historical fort again, was originally on an island reached by a bridge. It is now well enclosed by Battery Park. On the East River side, it should stand out that Front Street is no longer on the river, nor is Water Street (South Street is). These names provide clues.

[A digression: furthest inland of the three streets mentioned is Pearl Street, and the clue to its being on the water is very obscure, yet charming. At the point when ships pulled up all the way to Pearl Street, seashells, probably oyster shells because of the abundance of oysters in New York Harbor, littered the street, probably mostly shattered. Pearl Street’s name has nothing to do with pearls; it refers to the glistening mother-of-pearl on the insides of the shells. End of digression.]

So now we come back to Boston, whose landfill history is the most amazing of the four, since, of the territory within city limits, no less than 75% has been filled in.

The original land comprising Boston consisted of the Shawmut Peninsula (Shawmut still appears as the name of a bank). It looked like a large irregular shape of land connected by an extremely narrow neck of land, like a causeway, running south to the mainland. The area of the peninsula is today, not surprisingly, the central business district of downtown Boston, and the neck is now no more than Washington Street running south. On the western side of the peninsula rose a three-peaked ridge called Trimountain, dominated by Beacon Hill. As the population grew, landfill projects proliferated, using Trimountain as a source of earth. Colossal quantities of earth were moved. What was Trimountain no longer has three peaks; it just consists of a sorely diminished Beacon Hill, the sunny south slope (town side) of which remains a very prestigious neighborhood. (In 1634 the Puritans had raised a primitive beacon there to warn of invasion, hence the name.) These ambitious land-moving projects have been characterized as “cutting down the hills to fill the bays”. Thus what had been a peninsula eventually became an extension of the mainland.

The name of Dock Square near Faneuil Hall implies water, but it is no longer near any. You can visit the Boston Tea Party Ship (a replica) anchored on the east side of downtown, but you’ll find out that the actual site of the tea party is inland several blocks and no long over water. Contrary to what its name implies, Back Bay is a land area, too.

The Back Bay neighborhood comprises the most spectacular and attractive landfill project of all. By the late 19C, the large bay to the south side of where the Charles River is today, and to the “back” of downtown, had become polluted and undesirable. Over a period of 40 years it was filled in and resulted in one of the nation’s finest planned residential districts.

I’ve mentioned using the T to get around Boston. Let’s consider Boston’s subway in three parts: the Green line; the Red, Blue, and Orange lines; the Silver line. Red, Blue, and Orange are standard subway lines requiring no special comment.

The Green line was the first one built. It comes in from the southwest, and is unique. There had been traffic jams with the streetcars in the early 20C, and a cut was dug, primarly under Boylston Street and under Boston Common to accommodate the streetcars, then was covered over. [Note: this is called cut-and-cover and is how many subway lines are built that are near the surface; deeper subways are actually dug as tunnels.] To this day, the Green line has streetcars running underground (only in the downtown area), and is therefore different from the three lines already mentioned, built later. It all functions fabulously, except that on the Green line there are no platforms. You enter from track level just as you would enter a streetcar out in the street.

I mention this for the following reason. What is the oldest subway system in North America? Be careful before you answer, since you may be caught in the crossfire.

The only correct answer is a resounding: it depends. It depends what you mean by “subway”. If you say that putting streetcars underground counts as a GENUINE subway line, then Boston’s subway is the oldest, since its Green line was built first, and its vehicles are referred to in announcements as “trains”. If you exclude underground streetcars from consideration, then New York’s is, because of its original 1904 IRT Lexington Avenue line (Reflections 2006, Series 3). So: it depends.

This trip I came across a new twist that really bends the definition of “subway”. I saw that there was a new line being built, the Silver line, which is not yet completed, but is the one that goes out to Logan Airport, notably from South Station. I wanted to take a look, and did I get an eyeful. I entered a Silver line “station” underground (further out, they’re surface), and the first notable thing was that there was no platform, just like on the Green line. I would say you were standing instead at track level, except that in the concrete right-of-way--there were no tracks. After a few moments, out of the tunnel it appeared: a bus. BOSTON RUNS BUSES UNDERGROUND ON THE SILVER LINE AND CALLS IT A SUBWAY!!! I’d ridden all the other lines, but declined to get on an underground bus.

I will say again that Paris has some subway trains on its Métro that run on rubber tires in concrete troughs instead of on rails, yet the vehicles remain without a doubt trains, stopping at platforms. Boston runs out-and-out underground buses.

Here’s a language point: Boston is the only place I know that regularly uses the words “inbound” and “outbound” to describe rail and subway directions pointing either toward downtown or away from it. It seems so obvious to look for signs pointing to an inbound platform or outbound train, but these words come up rarely if ever, elsewhere.

Anyway, Boston really stretches the envelope in the variety of services it calls “subway”.

I cannot ride the T without thinking of one of my favorite songs from the Fifties by the Kingston Trio, The MTA, the song about a man stuck on the T in Boston because he had the entrance fare, but not the extra exit fare occasionally needed at some stations (his wife would hand him a sandwich “as the train came thundering through”). Here they sing it in 1959 on YouTube: The Kingston Trio: The MTA Included are the words:

Well, I made it just fine.

Right across from the Marriott at the beginning of Long Wharf were two restaurants I enjoyed on my two nights there. I had found Sel de la Terre (Salt of the Earth) online and learned they had a special wine dinner on Wednesdays, which I booked from home. It was Burgundy night and the sommelier explained the wines accompanying each course. Most interestingly, though, is that for these wine dinner, exceptionally, the restaurant serves family style, so I was seated at a table for eight (just like on the QM2), and got deeply involved in some lively conversations. It was also recommended that when I was back in Boston in a few days and staying one night in Copley Square that I dine at the Mexican restaurant Casa Romero on Gloucester Street in Back Bay. I did and enjoyed it.

Next door was Legal Seafoods. I’m wary about chains (Roy’s is an exception), but I’d heard quite a bit about this one, and enjoyed it, including their New England clam chowder they say has been served at the last seven presidential inaugurations. They use the motto “If it isn’t fresh, it isn’t legal”, which explains their unusual name.

Of course, something should be said on a travel-and-language website about the so-called “Boston accent”, which is as about as inaccurate a phrase as you’ll see. It’s not an accent, if anything it’s a dialect, and to the extent that it still exists, it’s not limited to Boston. Let me explain, but let me start with a story.

On that very first trip of mine to Boston by bus that ran a bit on the Boston Post Road, I said I was totally unprepared. The bus arrived somewhere in Boston, I don’t know where. How do you use the subway? Where is it? How do you get to Harvard? I had no idea of where I was or how I would proceed.

I found the nearest station of the T, which happened to be the Green line, because I remember the streetcars. “Inbound” seemed to make sense. But then what? I asked another passenger who said to take this line to Pack Street, and then change for the Red line. Simple enough. After a few stops, the guy turned to me and said, this is it, you want to change here, this is Pack Street! So I got off and found myself at the Park Street Station. I hadn’t connected what I heard him say with that spelling.

This is the situation that all English speakers (and others) should be aware of. Part of the English-speaking world is R-less. A large part. It includes much of Britain, and most of the Eastern US, the area directly settled from Britain. In this discussion I’m going to exclude the South, much of which is R-less in a unique way, for instance “for” being pronounced FOH-uh (no R). However, for this discussion, I’ll stick to the dialect areas of New York City and its region and also Northern New England (more than just Boston).

The part of the English-speaking world that is NOT R-less (and that is a valid language term, by the way) uses R in all possible positions. But being R-less means this:

Even people in R-less areas say the R’s in “red roses”. But that’s the only time. If a consonant follows the R, as in “farm”, the R is not pronounced. If nothing follows the R, as in “far”, the R is not pronounced. But do note that in “far away”, a vowel does follow the R, even though it’s in the next word, so the R IS pronounced.

Take the case of something like an O followed by an R, as in New York. The British, New York, and “Boston” pronunciation would drop the R, and the second word would sound something like Yawk.

[To help in the discussion as it continues, I’ll remind that English has a vowel named “ash”, as in words like “cat” and “fact”, that we do not use the ash letter for (æ), but here I will: cæt, fæct.]

It’s whan an A is followed by an R that it gets interesting, as in “park”. British and New York speech drop the R and pronounce it something like PAAHK.

But “Boston” speech does TWO things here. It drops the R like the others, but changes the vowel to ash, so it comes out like PÆK, which I spelled “Pack” earlier.

Two points: this variety of speech runs beyond Boston to other parts of Northern New England. I heard it in Portland, Maine, a few days later. Secondly, perhaps this New England variety is dying out. I hardly heard it this trip, and the subway announcements came out “Parrrrrk Street” as if a Chicagoan were saying it.

Anyway, to summarize the situation, I’ll use the name of the Maine resort “Bar Harbor”. Midwesterners and Westerners would pronounce it as written. Britishers and New Yorkers would say Baah Haahba. Some Mainers and other New Englanders would say Bæ Hæba.

In retrospect, that passenger that gave me directions years ago did say it in the following way, calling the Green line train a “car”, but I just didn’t catch on to the problem: “Take this cæ to Pæk Street and change to the Red Line to go to Hævid”. It seems like that sentence he said uses most of the words that come up in the classic joke line for this style of speech: “Pæk yuh cæ in Hævid Yæd”. I will also say I love to hear people speaking that way, but you just don’t hear it as much any more.

[A digression here for “the intrusive R”, which means R-less people putting an R where there’s no reason to do so. Remember that you’d say sista; you’d also say brotha; but when a vowel appears, the R comes back: sister_and brotha. That’s one thing, but now consider this. People who are used to that R coming back in logical places start putting it “back” where it was never lost in the first place. The word “China” followed by a vowel, comes out “China-r-under Mao”, or perhaps more accurately “China-r-unda Mao”. This seems to be done extensively and frequently by Britishers and New Englanders, and the more educated the person is, the more you’ll hear it. President Kennedy did it all the time, as did Bobby, and Ted Kennedy still does. Listen to Tony Blair do it as well. You’ll hear things like: “India-r-is in Asia-r-and Cambodia-r-is, too”. You can see why it’s called “the intrusive R”. (Say, how about a tuna-r-on toast?)]

I did a very simple Boston walk. It was not one of my urban marathons, it just took a few hours, much of it sitting on benches. I’ve “seen” what should be seen. I just wanted to get a feeling of the city again, skipping outlying areas and just walking through town. Since Long Wharf is the start of State Street (before the revolution, called King Street), which points right at the Old State House and was the traditional entrance to the city, I started there. Immediately leaving Long Wharf I crossed over the Big Dig. For decades, the ugly elevated expressway had cut off the waterfront (where I was) and the North End from the rest of the city, and for years, construction has been going on to put it underground. On the surface, all that seems to be needed is landscaping now.

Downtown around State Street is the traditional commercial district, with an engaging variety of architectural styles, old and new. Nearby are historic Quincy Market, which we watched being restored years ago, and historic Faneuil Hall (don’t try giving the name its French pronunciation—it’s pronounced like “flannel” without the first L). I cut over to Park Street Church and the Boston Common, where I sat and watched life go by for a while. I recalled that on that second winter visit in 1994, while Beverly and I were walking across the winter landscape of the Common towards Beacon Hill, her urological affliction first manifested itself, based on which she was diagnosed with Pick’s Disease in Florida the following June.

Nevertheless, I proceeded this time to cross the Common again and to walk around the quaint streets of Beacon Hill, including charming Louisburg Square (pronounced Lewisberg). Typical of so many buildings are the bowfront houses, where the front of the building bulges forward in a graceful curve. But I didn’t revisit my favorite area for bowfront houses, the South End just east of Back Bay, where some streets have block-long rows of bowfronts all built in the same style at the same time, giving a beautifully undulating flow to the building line.

Where Beacon Hill touches the corner of Back Bay is park area called the Esplanade stretching along the Charles, with the Hatch Memorial Bandshell. The area is reached by the Arthur Fiedler Footbridge over Memorial Drive. We first discovered the Esplanade on that first winter trip, and went back the following year. On a crisp, sunny winter’s day there is nothing wrong with sitting on a park bench and enjoying the park and river view. Actually, it was viewing it all now in summer weather that seemed a bit unusual.

Back across the footbridge, I was in Back Bay. The housing stock in the Bay is all upper-class stone, brownstone, and the like. Most of the buildings are townhouses, or mansions, or churches. However, over the past century, with the Depression, and the Income Tax, things aren’t the way they were, and many of the buildings are now institutions, such as colleges. Still the neighborhood is a charmer.

Picture the layout this way: as I said, Boston Common is just south of Beacon Hill. Then going west is the Public Garden ending at Arlington Street, across which starts Back Bay. The Bay’s layout is quite regular. There are five principal avenues going west, crossed by alphabetized streets with very British names: Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, and so on. (Casa Romero that had been recommended to me was on Gloucester, easily findable alphabetically.) Of the five avenues, the central one is Commonwealth Avenue, the Champs-Élysées of Boston. With mansions down both sides, it has a broad parkland strip down the middle, down which I promenaded this time.

Equally as interesting as Commonwealth Avenue is the next street inland, Newbury Street. Also lined with townhouses, it has been overwhelmingly commercialized, but in the nicest way, with these townhouses converted into restaurants, boutiques, clothing shops, bed-and-breakfasts.

A block further inland from Newbury between Clarendon and Dartmouth is Copley Square, named after the painter, John Singleton Copley. It’s one of the most intriguing places in Boston. Opposite the northwest corner of the square is where Old South Church relocated years ago from downtown. Its structure is called New Old South Church. How can you not love a building whose name includes the words “New Old”? The Boston Marathon ends here. Next, on the west side of the square, is the magnificent Boston Public Library. Facing the southwest corner is the Westin, where I would be staying one night on points when I came back from further north. The South side boasts the Copley Plaza Hotel (1912), designed by the architect of New York’s Plaza Hotel. Then, within the square itself surrounded by parkland, is Trinity Church (1877), the masterpiece of H. H. Richardson. Richardson had become enamored of the romanesque style, typified by its rounded arches. What is known as Richardson Romanesque is easily identifiable: deep Victorian colors, huge rounded arches around doors and windows, usually of massive stone blocks. I recently spotted a Richardson Romanesque public building in downtown Brooklyn, and the Minneapolis City Hall is at least in his style, and possibly by him himself.

Finally, as to Boston’s name. Not far from Copley Square is a residential side street we walked down on our last visit, named Saint Botolph Street. I got suspicious as to why a Boston street should be named after such an unusually named saint. But don’t jump to conclusions, because the accurate answer is tricky.

It’s equally tricky to ask someone where the QM2 gets its name. If someone answers it’s named after Queen Mary, they are most definitely wrong. The QM2 (also the QE2) is not named after any person at all. It’s named after another ship, the Queen Mary, as the number 2 indicates. THAT ship is named after a person, Queen Mary.

Boston, Massachusetts, is not named after a saint. It’s named after Boston, England. THAT Boston is named after a saint, Saint Botolph. Note how it works.

“Town” standardly appears in names in either long or short form: compare Charlestown near Boston with Charleston, South Carolina. It’s how short Botolph gets that’s surprising, also that the S in Boston is merely the remnant of a possessive.

My next stop after Boston will be Maine.